


The Natural Habitat of Haruno Sakura

by Tozette



Series: Stuff From The Natural Habitat [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Deidara's insane driving, Jiraiya owns a cafe, Madara the magician, Organized Crime, a little violence, blanket permission for podfic or translation, coffee shop AU, hipster Pein, more like disorganised crime, technically, technically starts off as a high school au, this story contains no actual romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 158,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College AU. Sakura moves to a new town to attend university and desperately needs to find a cheap room in a share house. Luckily, the Akatsuki need a new housemate.</p><p>( Look, I don't even know how to describe this AU anymore: Madara is a stage magician. He has a hat. Porn is smuggled. Itachi is a starving law student. Kakashi is teaching professional ethics - and Yamato is the lost and long-suffering postgrad under his supervision. Sakura is addicted to Icha Icha. Pein is a hipster barista and his latte foam art is a thing of beauty. Hidan is naked. Naked with a <i>goat</i>. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So here's this thing I wrote. I have been resisting the temptation to write a fun, trashy college AU heavily featuring Sakura and the Akatsuki for Naruto for a couple of weeks now, but I have since given in.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This installment: Sakura meets a hideously attractive stranger and manages to graduate from high school, academic awards are handed out, university offers are posted, problems arise and slightly dubious plans of cohabitation are hinted at.

The last day of compulsory school was kind of bittersweet. Nobody brought any books, except the few students still studying for late or deferred exams. Lockers were cleared out, cleaned up and left unlocked and empty for next year's cohort.

Konoha High was pristine, diligently prepared for an audience of parents, alumni and benefactors who would attend today's graduation ceremony.

Haruno Sakura was the class representative, and had therefore been tasked with finding a suitable graduation bouquet for their homeroom teacher. The flowers were huge, fresh-blooming oriental lilies with a deep blush near the stamen, and she was almost hidden behind the huge bunch of them as she carried them to their homeroom classroom, where Mizuki-sensei could "find" them later.

Flowers for a homeroom teacher were something of a tradition for the graduating class. Sakura had her doubts that Mizuki-sensei had much time for flowers, or that any of his students were really very thankful for his "guidance," but she would never have voiced any of them.

The corridors were silent and empty, since most of the students and guests were already listening to the principal's deathly boring graduation address. Sakura hurried even though her vision was obscured by the giant bouquet - she was pretty sure she was up for at least a couple of the academic awards, and it would be very awkward if she missed her opportunity to receive them at the assembly.

A bell rang, signalling the time, and Sakura broke into a trot. She might actually be late -

A door opened about three steps in front of her.

"Gaah!" Sakura and her flowers collided with the man coming out of the doorway. She stumbled sideways, landing on her butt on the floor.

She got to her knees to find that the bouquet was - well, it wasn't _that_ much worse for wear, at least. She, however, was covered in the reddish-brown stamens of the lilies, and her eyes were already beginning to water. Dammit.

The man she'd run into was supporting himself one-handed against the doorframe, but his face showed basically nothing. He looked oddly familiar, Sakura thought, but she couldn't think where she might possibly have seen him - except maybe in a magazine, or on television. He had that look about him, all self-assurance and effortless competence.

He wasn't _dressed_ like a model, really, all monochrome: dark-eyed with a spill of black hair and very pale skin, dressed all in dark, comfortable clothes. He had a necklace that caught the light.

She looked at him in wide-eyed silence for a second. Her neck felt hot.

Uncomfortably hot.

Now would be an excellent time to stop staring.

"I'm so sorry!" she blurted, scrambling to her feet. She tried to dust herself off a little but it was mostly in vain.

"It's fine," he said, leaning down to pick up the flowers. "Are these for your teacher?" His voice was _deep_.

"Ah.. yes," she nodded, taking them from him. "How did you know?"

"My brother studies here. Do you know where the auditorium is?"

"I just need to drop these off, and then I'm going there myself. I can show you, if you don't mind taking a small detour?"

"Not at all," he said. Once he'd recovered from the shock of colliding with a speeding schoolgirl, Sakura found his face difficult to read. He was very closed off, and she'd have to take him at his word.

She smiled. "Great! I - ah, I'm Haruno Sakura."

"Uchiha Itachi," he said.

"Ah... you're Sasuke's brother," she said slowly. That explained why he looked so familiar - his brother looked a lot like him. Uchiha Itachi nodded, but didn't actually comment on the fact.

Sakura frowned behind her bouquet. Uchiha Sasuke was... He was smart, good-looking, and seemed naturally blessed with grace and competence at basically everything he turned his hand to. He was good friends with one of her own good friends, Uzumaki Naruto.

Sakura had had an enormous crush on him a few years back when Naruto had first introduced them, but frequent exposure to his black moods and frankly brutal disregard for the feelings (and sometimes, uh, existence) of others had left those stomach-fluttering feelings in the dust.

Now, at the end of her final year, Sakura got on with him, which made her the envy of basically every other girl in their year, and all manner of deeply misguided underclassmen. She didn't mind his company - he was quiet, at the very least - and she suspected that he didn't entirely despise her, which was really all you could hope for with Sasuke.

Speaking socially, Uchiha Sasuke's most redeeming quality was probably that Naruto liked him so damn much.

Because Uchiha Sasuke on his own was, uh, kind of an asshole.

Not that Sakura would ever say that to his _brother_.

"He's in my class," she commented lamely instead, probably a few seconds later than she should have.

"Is he?" said Uchiha, in a tone that could have been interpreted pretty much any way Sakura cared to. "Interesting."

Sakura was sure it was _not_ interesting. She closed her mouth, feeling her face heat - that was allergies, obviously, from being covered in lily dust, because she wasn't feeling embarrassed just because she had nothing intelligent to say to this strange, exceedingly attractive man.

Allergies.

Yes.

Sakura led the way.

He followed her lead to the classroom, where Sakura left the slightly bruised arrangement on the teacher's desk and wrote 'THANK YOU FOR YOUR HARD WORK, SENSEI,' on the black board in blue chalk.

By the time she was done, her allergies had well and truly set in, and her eyes felt just a little as though somebody had scrubbed them with sandpaper. She swallowed, ignoring the awful feeling. "The auditorium is this way," she murmured.

They made it for the tail-end of the principal's speech and the beginning of the awards, stopping just inside the auditorium doors. All of the graduating cohort were seated in rows by class, but Sakura suspected it would be much more disruptive for her to go and find a seat among them than it would be for her to wait by the door for a suitable opportunity.

Uchiha Itachi seemed to feel similarly, because he, too, paused. She could see him scanning the crowd for his brother.

Spotting Sasuke was always easy, because Naruto was usually next to him. Naruto was loud.

"Itachi-san," Sakura whispered, one hand hovering near his elbow, and pointed toward the blond boy, who was waving his arms about something.

"Ah," said Itachi, nodding when he noticed the scowling boy next to him.

Sasuke's scowl was unreasonably pretty, probably because his whole face was unreasonably pretty. When Sakura scowled, she looked like an extra from a B-grade horror film; when Sasuke scowled, it was a broody moue, petulant and irrefutably cute.

She was just going to ignore that.

The boys weren't quite arguing, Sakura thought, because Sasuke refused to engage at all. Naruto was kind of... having a discussion with himself. He was uncannily accurate in filling in the blanks for Sasuke - internally supplying the insults and bitchy grunts the other boy would have made had he been responding at all - and Sakura knew from experience that the 'conversation' could go on for quite some time.

She kept an eye on them while one recipient descended from the stage, clutching his award certificate, and the principal began announcing the next one.

"...the combination of community service, extra-curricular activities, an unfailing kindness to fellow students and great academic achievement is a difficult one to balance. It is with great pleasure that I now announce the student to receive this year's Senjuu Award for Excellence," said the principal, beaming out at them.

Sakura snorted when Naruto stood up.

Sasuke smacked him over the head. "It's not you," he said flatly.

Naruto looked at him. Sasuke tugged him back down, rolling his eyes.

"Haruno Sa-"

(Naruto stood up.

"It's _not you_ ," Sasuke growled, yanking him down again.)

"-kura."

Sakura, covered in the stains of lily stamens, with red-rimmed eyes and a runny nose, blinked from the doorway.

There was a soft murmur through the ranks of assembled students when nobody stepped up.

"Haruno-san?" said Itachi, cutting a sideways glance at her. "Isn't that you?"

Sakura looked at him, blinking her burning eyes sluggishly. It _was_ her.

"Haruno Sakura," repeated the principal impatiently.

"U-un!" she darted up the stairs toward the stage to shake the principal's hand and collect her certificate. "Thank you," she murmured, trying hard to ignore the way people were eyeing her.

"Haruno," said the principal cautiously in a very low voice, "please remember that this is a formal event." He looked at her uniform.

It wasn't the place to defend herself, and the principal didn't really need to know that she'd fallen over and smooshed a bunch of flowers into a guest of the school. "Sorry," she said, ducking her head.

He sniffed, but let it go, and somehow she miraculously made her way down off the stage without tripping up or making more of a spectacle, despite her streaming eyes.

She was lucky in that somebody grabbed her arm and hauled her into a spare seat among the students.

"What happened?" Ino demanded in a whisper, looking at her face in poorly-concealed horror.

"Do you have any antihistamines?" Sakura asked pathetically, sniffling.

"I... No. But Ami's allergic to freaking everything, I bet she does..." Ino frowned, looking around, and then leaned over and tapped a girl several seats down. "Ami," she hissed. " _Ami_."

" _What_?" the girl said back, peering furtively around for any authority figure as she answered.

After a few moments' negotiation, a tiny white pill was procured and Sakura swallowed it dry, clutching her certificate to her chest and listening idly to the hissed bickering of Naruto and Sasuke behind her. (Naruto was bickering, really; Sasuke was grunting occasionally and, as far as Sakura could tell, jamming his elbow into the blond's ribs. Somebody had to, she supposed.)

"...while Konoha High School does prefer to encourage students who engage in a holistic range of activities, sometimes there is a student who excels greatly in one area despite _near crippling deficiencies_ in others," the principal was now saying, a little drily, and Sakura could almost feel his gaze. She swallowed, looking up at the stage again. "So without further ado, I now present the Hiruzen Sarutobi Award for outstanding academic achievement in the face of _near total misanthropy_ to Uchiha Sasuke."

There was a clatter behind her as Naruto stood up.

"That's _not you_ ," Sasuke growled, smacking him in the face as he clambered over the other boy to get to the aisle.

From where he was leaning quietly against the far wall of the auditorium, Sakura saw Uchiha Itachi clapping politely, his lips curved just a little.

"Oh my god," muttered Ino lowly, following her line of sight, "who is _that_?"

"No idea," said Sakura innocently, content to horde her knowledge. She didn't reflect on her motives too deeply. Besides, Ino was looking at Itachi-san as if she wanted to climb him like a tree; Sakura was practically doing a community service by not giving her an in with him.

It was charity, really.

It didn't take long for Sakura to get swept up in the day itself and to put Uchiha Itachi out of her mind. Even though the ceremony itself wasn't that interesting and her own mother couldn't make it (she was away on a business trip somewhere in the United States), the last day of her high school education felt important. Good. Exciting. Scary.

She looked around at all the people she knew here. They would all go to different places and do different things now, and there wasn't much chance they'd see each other every day. For some of them, that would be a blessing, but for others...

It felt like the end of something good.

And maybe the beginning of something, too.

Sakura wondered if it was normal to feel like she was going to cry.

* * *

Sakura was woken the morning their exam results and university offers came out by the buzz of her phone. It was on the verge of vibrating off her desk. Her room was still dark thanks to her heavy curtains, and she squinted at the bright light of the screen when she fumbled for it.

From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 9:55 AM  
Message body: SAKURA-CHAN I DIDN'T FAIL EVERYTHING!

From: PIG  
Timestamp: 10:03 AM  
Message body: HELL YES. Kaze-Capital University, here I come!

From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 10:05 AM  
Message body: Bastard won't tell me his score. BET HE DID WORSE THAN I DID.

From: U. Sasuke  
Timestamp: 10:11 AM  
Message body: I AM A GIANT ASSHasdxxxxxxxxxxxxxvvc

Sakura snorted. Even when her texts were from Sasuke, they were still mostly from Naruto.

She could answer them later - right now, she had to check her own post. There was a letter in the box, addressed to her. She examined it carefully, feeling weird and nervous and just a little bit fluttery.

It was thick. Very thick. That had to be a good thing, right?

Unless it was just filled with information about second-round offers and condolences for her rejection.

Of all her friends, hers was probably one of the most difficult goal to achieve. Senjuu University's medicine course had a fantastic reputation and the clearly-in score for entrance was basically stratospheric.

If she wasn't in the top one per cent of her state, she'd never even be considered.

She didn't open the letter.

It sat on her desk while she tapped the wood with her fingers and stared at it for way too long.

"Oh, just open it," she growled at herself, leaning forward and ripping the paper open.

She stared at it for a moment.

A noise came out of her, this strange croaking sound that she didn't think she'd ever made before.

She had been accepted. But more than that...

Her phone rang. Automatically, she picked it up. "Ne, ne, Sakura-chan, did you get into the thing you wanted?"

Naruto's voice was extremely loud, but Sakura's was louder. She leapt out of her chair. "I GOT THE SCHOLARSHIP!" she shrieked. "NARUTO, I GOT THE SCHOLARSHIP! I'M GOING TO BE A DOCTOR. HELL YES!"

Flushed and panting from the sheer exertion of raising her voice so loud, Sakura flopped back into her seat.

There was a pause.

"Sa... Sakura-chan?" Naruto said uncertainly. "Are you okay?"

" _I'm going to be a doctor_ ," she said to him, eyes gleaming in the dim light. "I did it! I'M IN."

It seemed to take a second to sink in, and then suddenly there was a wild whoop on the other end of the line, and Naruto was yelling just as loudly as she was.

It was sweet and a little flattering that he was so proud of her.

She beamed.

That was all well and good, but after receiving her offer was, of course, when the real work started. Sakura's scholarship might have covered her tuition, and it supplied her with just barely enough money to buy most of her course materials, but it didn't extend to living expenses.

Studying was over, exams were over and school was finished, so Sakura picked up as many shifts as possible. She would have to move closer to the university if she wanted to study there, and she wanted to have as much of a buffer between herself and abject poverty as possible.

With a lot of begging and laser-accurate puppy eyes directed at her manager, Sakura managed to get shifts five days a week at the call centre where she worked. She'd never worked so many shifts in a week before, usually doing a couple nights a week at most. Adjusting to it was brutal: the work was relentless, endless, unfulfilling and exhausting. She was at a loss as to how to explain why work that was so boring required so much of her mental energy and concentration.

And patience.

People really liked to have somebody to complain to and argue with. She was usually hoarse by Friday evening.

Two weeks in she started dreaming of the company software and endless market research surveys. She had a recurring nightmare in which her statistics of completed survey calls per hour were too low and clients called up to yell at her about them.

Three weeks in she managed to answer her mobile phone with: "Thank you for calling Emmerson Marketing Research, this is Sakura speaking."

She looked at her phone in grave consternation and betrayal while Naruto laughed hysterically on the other end of the line.

The growth of her bank account was terribly slow, and she felt restless and annoyed that she couldn't do better. But it would have to be worth it, because Sakura was going to need all the cash she could get.

When Haruno Mebuki finally - _finally_ \- got back from her business trip, she was very proud of her daughter, and for a second everything was awesome and Sakura felt immensely proud of herself.

Then Mebuki told her she was moving to the USA for work and selling their house.

"You won't be able to live here anyway, sweetie," said her mother, frowning gently at her. "You know that. You've been looking at share houses for weeks," she pointed out.

She looked like she was trying very hard to understand where her daughter was coming from, but she was still failing miserably.

Sakura nodded, feeling a bit stupid. "Yeah. Of course. I just - I felt good, having a safety net, you know?"

"I know it's a bit scary, but I know you'll be fine. You've always been very resourceful." Her mother gave her a sympathetic hug. "If it means anything, I'm only going to be a phone call away. And plane tickets aren't so expensive that I won't be able to get to you in case of an emergency, all right?"

Sakura nodded. It really wasn't the same as having her mother living three hours away by train, but it did soothe her anxieties a little.

"That said," her mother added, playing affectionately with a few locks of soft pink hair, "we've agreed with the estate agent that we'll be out by the third, so make sure you've found something by then, won't you? I'll be leaving the week before."

Sakura nodded. She'd just have to be ready. She could do that.

Unfortunately, finding a sharehouse, as it happened, was a complete nightmare.

She had to catch the train for three hours either way just to meet up with potential housemates, and she regretted it almost every time.

After the first occasion where she showed up at the house and a tall, pale man adjusted his sunglasses and asked her how she felt about 'modelling' for his 'life drawing,' Sakura made sure to meet her potential housemates in more neutral locations - public parks and cafes, in general.

Despite her best efforts, the places within her price range were inhabited by an assortment of perverts and drug addicts, and in one case a prostitute who was adamant that her clients be allowed to be in the apartment at any time of the day or night.

"Maybe you're being too picky," Ino suggested at one point. Sakura could hear her breathing change over the phone and knew she was probably lifting a heavy pot. Her father was a very successful florist, and she was often pressured into being useful around the shop.

"I don't have anything against prostitutes," said Sakura firmly, "but I don't want to live in an illegal brothel. Is that too much to ask?"

Ino made a sympathetic noise, but her response was daunting. "Looks like it might be, Forehead," she pointed out.

It was such a nightmare, in fact, that Sakura resorted to calling up everybody she knew from high school who might possibly hope to be attending Senjuu University and begging for a room, or at least a hint as to where she could find one.

Hyuuga Hinata was a girl Sakura knew only because they'd been partners in chemistry class, but she begged her number off Ino and called her anyway.

"Ano..." said Hinata softly. "My situation is different, I'm sorry. I'm living in a single in the halls of residence..." she trailed off. "Have you considered that option?"

"Can't afford it," said Sakura, scowling down at her nails.

"O-oh," said Hinata, and there was a sudden awkward pause where neither of them acknowledged that Hinata's family was filthy rich.

"Well," said Sakura brightly, "never mind! Thanks."

Sakura had tallied it up. She was probably going to spend at least thirty hours a week either at class or studying, according to the anonymous denizens of the internet. That didn't leave her a lot of time for working on the nights and weekends, and she'd need to rent a room somewhere that was very, very cheap.

"Nope, moving in with Neji and Lee," said Tenten, another girl she barely knew.

"What, two guys?" Sakura asked, diverted despite herself.

Tenten laughed. "They're _friends_ ," she said, with emphasis. "Lee's guardian has a dojo out in the city. We're sharing the room above it - it's going to be pretty cramped as it is. I can ask Gai-sensei if he knows anywhere, though?"

Sakura might have felt ashamed to ask for a favour so blatantly, but she really was desperate. "Yes, please," she said. "Please."

Over the next week, Tenten did text her through some leads, but they usually turned out to have been snapped up very quickly, or just slightly out of Sakura's price range.

By the time orientation day for Senjuu University's new semester arrived, Sakura still didn't have anywhere to live.

Most of the house was already packed away in storage.

"I'll leave you a key," Mebuki had promised, kissing Sakura absently on the cheek as she dug around for her passport. "You can get any of the furniture you need when you find a place, okay?"

She'd already left for the States.

Sakura was beginning to panic.

She skipped orientation day, because it wasn't like they were learning anything useful. She was pretty sure she could look up all the orientation information online later, anyway - and she needed to spend the day looking for somewhere to live.

* * *

From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 11:15 AM  
Message body: asked Gai-sensei. if you haven't got a place yet you can sleep in the dojo overnight.

To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 11:16 AM  
Message body: OMGthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 11:17 AM  
Message body: he says we have a "duty to the future to help the youth of today blossom". don't thank me yet

To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 11:20 AM  
Message body: At this point I'm regretting that I said no to Illegal Brothel Girl. I am pretty sure the last guy wanted to marry me so he could stay in the country.

There was no answer forthcoming to that, but Sakura hadn't really expected one.

* * *

Secure in having a place to at least sleep safely in while she was still trying to find somewhere to live, Sakura packed herself off to the train station the following morning.

She felt very strange about locking up the house and leaving the key, but she wasn't meant to be coming back. All the furniture was in storage, and she was leaving with a suitcase and a backpack.

Despite her familiarity with the station, Sakura felt very small and alone looking up at the departure information board.

Her train would depart in twenty minutes. At least that was plenty of time. She made it to the platform and pulled out her phone. She hadn't felt the telltale buzz of a text, but -

Well, she had no new messages anyway.

Idly, she flipped through her contacts.

To: U. Sasuke  
Timestamp: 8:03 AM  
Message body: What did you end up deciding to study, anyway?

She didn't really expect an answer back. Sasuke was nothing if not laconic. But she felt as though the familiarity of him being a cranky smartass would be very comforting right about now.

She logged into all her social media services and checked them for updates or messages. Most of the things people were posting had to do with their new dorm rooms or university timetables, and many of them were posted from locations miles and miles away.

At a quarter past, the train pulled up and Sakura hauled her suitcase on board. She settled it in the metal rack above the passengers' heads and put her backpack on her seat. She wanted to remain standing up and moving around for a little longer, since she'd be sitting down for a few hours in just a moment.

A few other people got onto the train carriage, but it seemed like it was going to be a pretty empty journey.

With a sigh, Sakura ran her hands through her hair and stared at her semi-transparent reflection in the train window while it idled at the platform. Her eyes tracked movements beyond the glass without really seeing them.

It took her a moment to react when she saw somebody move behind her.

She recognised him. "Itachi-san," she said, turning to face him and blinking in surprise. He had just shoved his own luggage above the seats and turned to look at her as well. He wore sleeveless tops well, she discovered, because he had really fabulous arms: square shoulders, smooth skin, wiry muscles.

Mmm. Yes.

Sakura dragged her eyes back to his face. Oh, god. Was she blushing already?

"Sakura-san, wasn't it?" he said quietly.

His voice was still deep.

"Yes," she said, smiling a little. He remembered her! She noticed the logo on one of his bags. "Itachi-san, do you attend Senjuu University?"

He followed her gaze and nodded. "I assume that's where you're going, too. Weren't you meant to be at orientation yesterday?"

She looked away. "Ah, I had a few problems finding somewhere to stay, so..."

He nodded. "Many students do, unless they live on campus. You found somewhere, though?"

She gnawed her bottom lip, wondering if she should just keep it to herself. But then, if Itachi-san was living in that area, he might know where she could look... She shook her head. "No, not yet. I'm staying in a - well, in a friend's dojo until I can find somewhere."

Great, now she sounded like some kind of pathetic hobo. She cringed a little inside.

The train shuddered to life underneath them and began moving off, slowly at first but steadily building steam.

Itachi made a quiet agreeing noise, and then they were silent.

There were a number of things Sakura wanted to ask him, but she found her voice was pretty uncooperative. She licked her lips and looked down at her hands.

Her phone buzzed, and, hideously thankful for the interruption, she pulled it out.

From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 8:23 AM  
Message body: he's doing science and wont tell me what major he wants. he's at Sound U, so he's like idk an hour away from you on the train?

From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 8:23 AM  
Message body: you should visit and punch him in the face for me on weekends

Sakura felt her lips curl into a smile and quickly texted back.

To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 8:24 AM  
Message body: Somebody has to do it.

"Sakura-san," said Itachi's soft voice. She blinked up at him, flicking the screen of her phone off. It was entirely possible that he wouldn't approve of text conversations about assaulting his little brother.

"I know of... There _might_ be a place," he said slowly. His face was as blank as ever, so she couldn't tell what the hesitation in his voice indicated. "I have some... friends, who live near the university. They recently had a housemate move out and will need to fill the room as quickly as possible. It must certainly be cheap."

Sakura straightened up. Cheap and available were getting to be her only real requirements anymore. "Can you introduce me?"

"You might not like it," he said. "There's no extra room at my place, or I'd invite you to stay there," he added, and she was very glad that he just ignored the way her face burned brightly at that comment. Stay? With Itachi? Her heart would never be able to handle it.

"I can't leech off my friends' kindness forever," she said. "I would really like to meet your friends."

He sighed like he was already regretting this decision. "I'll talk to them this evening and see if I can arrange a meeting tomorrow," he said.

" _Thank you_ ," she said, the words all coming out in a rush, clasping her hands in front of her and bowing her head.

"You might not like it," he repeated with an ominous hint of warning in his voice, which she ignored completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's note** : Firstly, I totally stole Sasuke's award from _Daria,_ so credit to Susie Lewis and Glenn Eichler for that awesome TV show.
> 
> Secondly: I have no idea what I'm doing. I just want to write a silly college AU about attractive crazy people and Sakura failing at trying to be an adult. Also, like, explosions and underwear and tasty food, those are things I want to write about too. And terrible classes. And what a really awful teacher Kakashi is. There will probably be a really hipster cafe at some point. I will add tags and warnings as necessary as I go. 
> 
> Feedback, commentary, ideas, requests (I don't make any promises, but I do like to find out what people want to read about), and MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES all very welcome. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment: In which Sakura finally makes it to class, meets Tsunade (-sama), discovers the Power of Youth at the Nekkutsu Dojo, and meets an art student. :)

Sakura left the train station with Itachi-san’s phone number in her phone, which was terrifying and thrilling and really not something she should be getting too worked up about. It was only because he was trying to organise a meeting between her and her potential housemates, after all.

She shook her head as though that might free her stupid pale skin of her blush - Itachi-san probably thought she had some kind of freaking skin disease or something, one that somehow caused her face to become lobster red every time he looked at her - and tried to psyche herself up and away from the idea.

“You don’t even know him,” she growled to herself, hauling her suitcase along through sheer force of will. People on the street who saw her scowling face gave her a wide berth. “He could be at least as much of an asshole as his brother.”

But, tragically, she knew he wasn’t. Sasuke would have grunted vaguely and ignored her entirely, if they were strangers.

She made a noise of disgust. An old lady crossed the street to avoid the expression on her face.

Sakura pulled her suitcase onto the bus laboriously while the driver rolled his eyes and huffed like she was offending his very being somehow, and managed to get her things all shoved out of the way of other passengers. She had her first lecture at twelve, so she wouldn’t have time to dump any of her things at the dojo - she wasn’t entirely certain how she was going to _get_ to the dojo, to be honest, because she was mostly unfamiliar with the public transport in her new city. She’d have to cope with hauling her suitcase around.

Campus was deeply confusing, and big enough to have its own post code. Senjuu University was very old and the buildings were a mishmash of odd designs: some were made of heavyset granite with tall and narrow windows, some of worn wood, some of blonde brick and bottle glass. They were attached to each other in mazelike and unfathomable ways, and on all maps and timetables they were given numbers - but the buildings themselves had names.

She spent five minutes peering up at the Hashirama Centre, trying to figure out if it was the “block 22“ on her map of the university.

It ...wasn’t.

Her lecture turned out to be held, not in the medicine building, but actually under the commerce building where there was an underpass beneath a walkway with the entry tucked away in the shadows.

The lecture hall was large, with a series of tiered seats made to house a couple hundred students. The lights were down so slides could be projected onto wall at the front. It seemed empty, and Sakura had the sinking feeling that she‘d gotten the wrong room yet again.

“You’re one of the new meddies?”

Sakura flinched at the sudden, unexpected voice. It took her a second to locate its source: a woman on the edge of the cold half-light shining from the projector, dressed in a sleeveless wrap blouse that showed off her soft, toned arms. She leaned with the swell of one hip propped against the desk at the front of the theatre and watched Sakura through a fall of blond hair. There was something terribly hard about her gaze.

“Uh, yes,” said Sakura, bobbing her head in a nervous little bow. “Yes, am I in the right place?”

“Yes. You’re the first one,” said the woman, turning to glance at the clock on the wall. The glowing red numbers said that Sakura was ten minutes early. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Take a syllabus and sit down. It doesn’t matter where.” She waved one hand vaguely. “You can leave that bag up the front so it won’t be in everyone’s way,” she added, eyeing Sakura’s suitcase.

“Ah, sorry,” said Sakura, scrambling to follow her orders. “I didn’t have time to move earlier, so--” she stopped, because the woman was clearly not listening. “Right,” she muttered, taking a seat near the front. The front was the best place to hear the lecture, right? Right.

The woman seemed wholly disinclined to talk to Sakura, so she examined the handout instead. The syllabus included a broad description of the entire degree and a more specific outline of the first semester’s classes, all of which were compulsory for med students.

Slowly, the students trickled into the lecture theatre, talking and yelling to each other.

At exactly twelve, the blond woman slammed her hand into her desk with a thunderous noise. Pretty much everybody flinched. “Quiet!”

The room fell silent.

“My name is Tsunade,” she said flatly, straightening up and crossing her arms, inadvertently drawing attention to the swell of her breasts. “I’m the head of your faculty. You should all have received a handout when you came in. If you did not, you can collect one afterwards. Welcome to your first year of medicine.” She gave the students what looked like a welcoming smile, but it made some deep, instinctive part of Sakura’s brain want to curl up into a shivering ball.

“Let’s get started. Shizune?”

“Tsunade-hakase.” A smaller, dark-haired woman with a delicate face came forward, but hesitated. “Hatake-sensei isn’t here,” she said in a voice that probably didn’t travel past the first few rows of students.

“So?” the blond snorted. “He knows the course. If we wait for him we’ll never get out of here, and I have places to be.”

“You don’t have any classes after this one,” Shizune said, even more quietly, so that Sakura had to strain to hear. She looked down at her syllabus so it wouldn’t look like she was trying to listen in.

“The bar is a place,” said Tsunade.

Shizune sighed.

The rest of the lecture was three hours long, interrupted only by the creak of the door when a tall man slunk in an hour late and stood leaning against the wall. The major teachers for the semester were introduced: Shizune-sensei, Kakashi-sensei, Kabuto-sensei and Tsunade-hakase - “But you can call me Tsunade-sama,” she added, flipping her blond hair over one shoulder.

There was a titter through the class at her joke, but Sakura did not laugh. From the hard smile on the woman’s pretty face, she thought Tsunade was probably serious.

Kabuto-sensei was a pale man with glasses and dark eyes that seemed to catch every detail. He was introduced as the teacher who would be overseeing lectures and units on the scientific basis of clinical practice. He had a warm smile and a surprisingly gentle demeanour. Following his brief introduction to the outline of his unit, Shizune-sensei bowed and smiled cheerfully and told them that she would be helping them understand the social aspects of medicine through a unit on population, society, health and illness. She seemed quiet, but competent - and probably a little more serious than Tsunade.

Lastly, the man who’d come in late was introduced as Kakashi-sensei, “teaching on the theme of personal and professional development and ethics,” which seemed kind of ominous, considering how incredibly suspicious he looked. He was wearing a scarf that covered his mouth and nose, and an eyepatch over his left eye. His hair was an odd grey-white, like he’d had a bad dyejob somewhere and covered it with way too much silver toner.

He waved cutely to the seated students and then quickly resumed looking like he was about to pass out from sheer boredom.

At one point while Shizune was talking, Sakura saw Kakashi reaching for something in his back pocket - and from the corner of her eye she saw Tsunade twitch, the sudden shift of her weight, the angry cut of her eyes.

The teachers’ gazes met behind an oblivious Shizune’s head for a moment. Slowly, Kakashi withdrew his hand from his back pocket, fingers empty. He wiggled his fingers at Tsunade.

Her expression was thunderous.

Sakura was not quite sure what was going on, but she had the sinking, sneaking, terrible suspicion that her semester was not going to be as uneventful as she’d hoped.

 

* * *

 

 

<From: Unknown Number  
Timestamp: 6:13 PM  
Message body: Haruno, Tenten wants me to show you to the dojo after your last class. I finish half an hour before you, so which building and room are you in? >

Sakura eyed her phone.

She wasn’t really sure who the text was from. It could have been from Lee, who she would imagine might have leapt at the chance to get her phone number - but she doubted it. It didn’t sound like him. Probably one of the other people Tenten was living with, then.

She frowned, but fired off a quick text with her class location anyway. The message mentioned Tenten, and the person sending it clearly knew Sakura’s name... and they were still on campus anyway, surrounded by people. If the guy seemed dodgy when she got out of the classroom, she could always leave and find campus security.

This lecture theatre’s speakers gave an unpleasant buzz when she hit ‘send,’ and she tried her best not to look suspicious. Kabuto-sensei’s eyes landed on her almost immediately, and his lips curled just a little.

She doubted she’d fooled him for a second.

At seven o’clock, this last lecture was finally over. The class scrambled to collect their bags and books and disappeared out the doors. A few remained behind to discuss scheduling conflicts or course concerns with Kabuto-sensei, who was settled against the desk and smiling as though he had all the time in the world for student questions at 7PM at night.

Sakura grabbed her suitcase at the front of the class and hauled it with her. She suspected her arms were going to be sore tomorrow, since she’d been pulling it from class to class all day.

She paused outside the door to the lecture theatre, looking around for the person who’d texted her.

“Haruno-san?”

She turned left and found herself face-to-face with another stranger. “Ah, are you the person who texted me?” she asked. He had white irises, but very dark hair and eyelashes. He looked a little strange with his pupils so small in the sea of white that made up his eyes.

He nodded. “Don’t stare,” he said shortly, turning on his heel toward the bus stops outside the gates of the campus. “It’s hypocritical coming from a girl with pink hair.”

Sakura felt her eyebrows rise all on their own. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said, because she had been staring, even if he was a jerk about it. And if she was going to sleep in his home, she may as well try to get along.

“You did not offend me,” he said flatly. He picked up his pace.

“Okay then,” muttered Sakura under her breath, struggling to keep up with her suitcase and backpack. “Glad we cleared that up.”

The Nekketsu Dojo stuck out like a sore thumb. It was across the road from a shopping complex made of concrete and glass, and it was a sprawling, low building of wood. The plot of land was otherwise given over to whatever plants thrived. Next to the busy highway, it looked like something from the distant past.

“Wow,” said Sakura, peering around. There was a tiny, carefully-maintained little patch of herbs growing close to the building, although it was difficult to see in the fading light. “This place is really nice.”

“Sakura!” Tenten threw open the sliding door, smiling cheerfully at her. She was dressed down: soft pants, bare feet. Her shirt was sweat-stained and her face was red, but she looked happy. There was a long wooden pole in her hand, with the end curved just a little into a point. “You made it. Hi, Neji,” she added, wiggling her fingers. “Dinner’s supposed to be in ten minutes or so.”

“Who cooked?” Neji asked, his voice and expression carefully neutral.

Sakura saw Tenten’s dark brows rise knowingly. “We ordered in,” she said, smiling.

Neji’s posture relaxed, and he stepped through the door past her. He wasn’t very friendly, but there was some closeness in the way he didn’t stop his shoulder from brushing hers as he moved past.

“Here, do you need a hand?” Tenten asked, reaching one-handed for the suitcase.

“No, no, it’s fine!” Sakura waved her arms, determined not to put Tenten out. “I’m so grateful that you’re letting me stay here,” she added, toeing off her shoes before she stepped onto Tenten’s clean floors. The floors were wood, not tatami, and there were places where the walls looked as though they’d taken a serious battering.

“I thought a dojo would be more formal,” Sakura said, peering around. There was a lot of empty floor space, a foam mat rolled and stored against a wall, a rack of assorted weapons - mostly wooden replicas, presumably used for training so nobody got too hurt - and a banner across one wall proclaiming the power of hard work and youthful vigour.

Tenten glanced around as though she hadn’t really considered it. She ran her free hand through her sweaty hair and then gently leaned her wooden pole - thing - against one wall. “Well, we clean it every night and morning, but it’s a place that’s in use every day. It can’t really be that formal. Come through here.”

There was another screen door leading out of that huge main room into a narrow wooden corridor, which led off to a kitchen, a closet-sized bathroom, and what Sakura thought must be a store room.

“You can sleep in the main room if you want,” Tenten said uncertainly, “but I thought maybe you’d want somewhere a little more private. And also because Lee begins training at four in the morning,” she added, scrunching up her nose.

As far as Sakura knew, four in the morning was a thing that existed only for other people - and she was pretty happy to keep it that way. “This is fine,” she said, ignoring the fact that there was no light and how she could feel a gentle breeze from cracks in the wood. “Really,” she said to Tentent, who looked dubious, “this is great. Thank you.”

“Um, okay. Well, just watch out for Lee’s weights,” she said, nodding toward a pair of desperately ugly orange legwarmers. “I’ve stubbed my toes on them more times than I can count. I guess I’ll leave you,” she nodded, and left the door open only a crack when she exited, giving Sakura a thin stripe of light to see by.

Okay, so it wasn’t actually great. It was tiny, cramped, and filled with random broken stuff fromm the dojo. There were padded planks of wood, hideous legwarmers, a couple of old chains, discarded wooden weaponry that Sakura didn’t really recognise. There was a definite draught coming from somewhere.

She sighed and checked her phone in case Itachi-san had texted her. She found that Naruto had sent her a photograph of a bowl of ramen he ate for dinner, but there was nothing from Itachi.

Sakura laid out her sleeping bag on the floor, finding that the room was just large enough to accommodate her sleeping body. In her backpack were the textbooks she needed for classes, and she supposed she should have started on the homework before she managed to fall behind, but there were other important things, too.

She cracked open her old laptop and began looking through job search websites. Call centres were probably her best bet, since she had a good reference from Emmerson, but they often didn’t have very flexible hours.

She’d skimmed three jobs and fired off a resume to one of them before there was a crash and an excited yell. “Sakura-san!”

That was definitely Rock Lee’s voice, even though it was distant - he might still have been outside the dojo, on the street. On the street, screaming her name. She sighed.

Even just a year ago, Sakura might have cringed at the sound of his voice. Now she felt a weird mix of exasperation and amusement - almost a little bit like what she felt when Naruto was being an idiot (so, always), but less coloured by the rosy glow of familiarity.

Footsteps thundered, growing louder with every second - and then suddenly they came to a stop. A shadow blocked out the light from the doorway, and when Sakura glanced up, she could see through the crack a single huge eye lit by the sickly glow from her computer screen.  
There was a quick, polite knock. “Sakura-san.”

“You can open the door,” she said, sliding closed the lid of her laptop and getting to her feet.

The door flew open, revealing Lee’s face in all its tragically unattractive glory. He was getting to be tall now, broad-shouldered and lean-muscled and still wearing the most hideous clothes he could possibly have found.

Sakura felt the urge to avert her eyes, but grimly held on. He was a nice boy, and a good person, and she should be nice to him. “Hi, Lee. How’s training?”

“It’s excellent! I am improving greatly under Gai-sensei’s vigorous instruction!” He beamed at her, teeth shining.

“A-ahh,” she said agreeably, twitching a little. “That’s good.

Lee straightened suddenly, his body taut as a wire, and saluted her. “Sakura-san!”

Why did everything he said sound like yelling?

“U-un,” she responded, blinking.

His saluting hand swept around to give her a thumbs up. “Have you reconsidered your stance on going out with me yet?”

She cringed. “Um... no, Lee. I’m sorry, I haven’t.”

He drooped. “Oh.”

There was an awkward silence. “Lee...” she sighed. “I really like you, but I don’t want to go out with you.”

He straightened again. “I won’t be disheartened,” he told her, with a small but genuine smile. “Everyday, I will try to be the best man that I can become. I’ll keep improving, Sakura-san, and I’ll keep trying. One day, you will accept me.”

That was... sweet, she supposed, but it put her in the awkward position of denying his constant, very enthusiastic, hard work. He wasn’t passive-aggressive about it, and he never made her feel as though he was _entitled_ to her - but... Sakura looked away. She kind of felt like a terrible human being.

“Lee, come on.” And thank god, that was Tenten’s exasperated voice. Her hand shot from somewhere else in the narrow hallway into Sakura’s view, catching Lee by the top of his ear.

“Don’t you ever learn?” she sighed, and gave a gentle tug. “Come on, food’s here! We eat upstairs,” she said to Sakura, exchanging her grip on his ear for one on his wrist and pulling Lee along behind her. “We got extra for you.”

“You did?” Sakura blinked. Then she began to follow them up a narrow, old-looking wooden staircase to a much smaller second floor.

There was a room with three futons, some rice-paper divides stored to one side, and a low table. In one corner was a tiny tiled area with a single stove element, a little oven and a sink.

“Not bad for student accommodation, hey?” Tenten asked, glancing sideways at Sakura.

“True,” she agreed. She almost opened her mouth to point out that Tenten could be living with some creep who wanted to draw her naked, but then she realised what kind of trouble that might cause if Lee overheard. “I’ve seen some pretty bad living situations recently,” she said instead.

“Ah, Haruno-san!” came a huge, hearty voice. The man it issued from was like an older, shinier version of Lee: taller, bulkier, and by the looks of things, marginally crazier. “Welcome to the Nekketsu Dojo! I would never turn away a friend of my cute student’s! You can stay for as long as you need!”

“A-ah,” said Sakura. “Thank you.” She bowed low. Neji stepped around her, setting plastic take-out containers onto the table. He added a freshly-brewed pot of tea and five mismatched cups.

“Gai-sensei!” Lee said, bringing one fist to his leaking welling eyes. “You’re so generous. I have so much to learn from you!”

“You live here?” Sakura whispered helplessly to Neji, and immediately felt like a giant ungrateful cow. “Sorry, I mean, it’s -”

“I have known Lee and Gai-sensei for almost a decade,” he said tonelessly, pouring a cup of tea. Between his old-fashioned navy yukata, his long, dark hair and his completely serene countenance, Neji seemed like he carried his own personal bubble of zen, steering it around his housemates with practised ease.

Sakura kind of envied him.

“Tea?”

“...yes, thank you,” she said, inclining her head and sinking down before the table.

The food was from some local stir-fry restaurant: snow peas, baby corn, onion and red peppers with pork. It tasted vaguely Chinese, owing to the aromatic combination of sichuan peppers, fennel seeds, cloves, cinnamon and ginger root.

“This is nice,” Sakura commented when there was finally a pause in which she could be heard. “Thank you,” she added. She was extremely aware that she was imposing on the Nekkutsu Dojo without giving them anything in return, and she felt determined to be as polite and as little trouble as possible.

“It is excellent to see young women with appetite!” Gai-sensei said, beaming.

Sakura felt her entire face flush. She hadn’t taken _that_ much, had she?

“Way to make her self-conscious, Gai-sensei,” sighed Tenten. “It’s fine,” she added to Sakura.

There was an awkward pause, which seemed to extend to everybody at the table except Neji, whose calm was utterly impenetrable. He sipped his tea, examining the company with his strange eyes through the rising steam.

Sakura thought he was a little bit intimidating. And kind of a jerk.

The awkward silence was broken by Gai-sensei.

“I’ll give you some nice advice!” he declared, waving one arm and beaming around at all of them. “Protein,” he picked up a piece of meat in his chopsticks, “should make up at least twenty per cent of your diet!”

“Ohhh,” said Lee, staring avidly at him.

“Should it?” Sakura said, eyeing her meal. She ate a lot of vegetables and fruits, but she was almost certain this was the first time she’d eaten meat in several days. What else had protein? Red bean paste, she supposed. Sesame seeds?

“Protein is absolutely necessary for building muscle and having sufficient essential amino acids,” Gai-sensei explained. “And meat is important for iron, too. Especially for young women.”

“Eh?” Sakura blinked. “Why is it more important for women?”

There was an awkward pause. Gai flushed across his cheeks a little. “Ah... when a woman is in the full bloom of her youth...” he said hesitantly.

Sakura wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.

“Women bleed more,” said Neji flatly. He put his tea down with a soft clink in the following silence.

“Oh.” And once again Sakura’s face was bright red.

Another awkward pause. Thankfully Lee just looked a little confused.

“SO,” said Tenten, very loudly. “HOW WAS YOUR FIRST DAY OF MEDICINE?”

* * *

 

  
As kind as Lee and Gai were, Sakura was more than ready to retreat from their boisterous company. She cleaned up in the tiny bathroom, scrubbing at her skin with a rough washcloth, before changing into a pair of track pants and an old t-shirt and brushing her teeth.

Then she headed back to her tiny store room and left the hallway light on so she could do some homework before bed. Her phone buzzed almost as soon as she settled onto her sleeping bag.

<From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 8:42 PM  
Message body: Can you do 3:30 PM outside the fine arts building?>

Sakura dithered over how soon she should return his message and what she should say.

<To: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 8:50  
Message body: I can do 3:30 PM. Tomorrow’s my short day. Thank you.>

She wondered if he would text her back.

He didn’t.

And why would he?

“Idiot.” With a frustrated sigh aimed mostly at herself, Sakura cracked open _Clinical examination: a systematic guide to physical diagnosis_ and began to read.

* * *

 

At five o’clock in the morning, Sakura was woken by the door to the storeroom she was sleeping in being hurled open. It banged against the wall and she sat up, shrieking.

“Good morning, Sakura-san!" Gai-sensei was standing in her doorway, fully dressed, in a pose with one hand stuck out in a thumbs-up. “Let’s sweat our youth’s sweat together!”

Sakura’s eyes went huge. “Wh-what?”

Was that some kind of euphemism? She stared in horror.

“Mou...” sighed Tenten, peering around the edge of the door. Her eyes were bleary and her hair was only half-up. She was still fiddling with the left side, twisting it into a bun. “He wants you to come for a run with us.”

“I don’t run,” Sakura said blankly.

Gai-sensei’s pose and expression didn’t waver.

Tenten just yawned. “He won’t stop until you do, so... better put your shoes on.”

Sakura was not a runner. She hadn’t really thought of herself as being unfit: she could jog to catch a bus, dance to songs when they were fun, climb flights of stairs - all of the normal, day-to-day things, she could do without feeling breathless or exhausted.

But there was an enormous difference between lazy-girl daily-life fit and Nekketsu Dojo fit.

Sakura discovered that she could run for approximately five minutes before her lungs were burning and her head was dizzy. “I can’t,” she gasped, dropping back to a walk. “I -”

“Then we’ll walk for a few minutes, and run another kilometer!” Lee said brightly, dropping back to keep her company.

“Pathetic.” Neji sniffed disdainfully and picked up the pace.

“Jerk,” Tenten rolled her eyes. “Guess I’ll see you back at the dojo,” she shrugged, following after him.

“Gai-sensei, you should go ahead too!" Lee declared firmly. “I will keep Sakura-san company and make sure she returns safely.” He struck a thumbs-up pose.

“Nice!” beamed Gai, and took off after the others. His long legs covered the ground easily.

It was only then that Sakura realised that they’d all slowed down dramatically for her. “Oh, god,” she moaned.

“Sakura-san?” Lee looked alarmed.

“Neji’s a jerk, but he’s right,” she said ruefully. “I’m a bit pathetic.”

“Sakura-san, everybody is pathetic when they first start something new,” he said confidently. “It’s your youthful determination and how you improve that counts!”

Maybe, Sakura thought, but after running six lots of five minutes in an hour, she was pretty sure that she had exactly zero determination to improve on it. Mostly she wanted to have a shower and sit down until her legs would hold her up again.

And it wasn’t even six thirty yet.

 

* * *

 

It was Sakura’s short day at uni, so classes were only from 10 AM until 3PM. For the future, she had hopes that when she found work she might be able to take a shift from four until eight somewhere, but for now that time was good for studying.

She heaved a sigh when she got to the fine arts building because she could finally stop walking. It was only a quarter past, so she figured she had time to wait. She contemplated putting her backpack down, but the area was kind of dirty, so she left it on her back. Gingerly, she stretched out her legs. It had only been ten hours since she’d gone (been forced into!) running, and she was already developing an ache.

That didn’t bode well. She wondered how it was going to feel the next day. Intolerable, probably.

She balanced carefully on one foot and pulled the other up behind her, cautiously stretching out her quadriceps. It was already so stiff. That couldn’t be good.

Something twinged in her ankle, and she lost her balance, pinwheeling her arms like an idiot. She might have saved herself, but her backpack threw her off balance. “Eek!”

Somebody quite unexpectedly grabbed one of her flailing arms in long-fingered hands. Sakura found herself steadied back on both feet, and then released.

She turned. For a second she was sure it was a girl - a girl with seriously the nicest hair she’d ever seen, nicer than _Ino’s_ , even, blond and thick and flowing and fluttering in the breeze like a freaking shampoo advertisement - with bright blue eyes and a remarkably pretty face. But then details jumped out at her: the breadth of shoulders, the hard edge of his jaw, the thinness of the lips.

He caught his bangs in one hand, sweeping them out of his eyes. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl who can’t stretch her own legs without falling over, yeah,” he said, grinning at her. His voice was definitely male.

“I wouldn’t have fallen,” she said defensively, adjusting her pack on her shoulders.

“Suuure,” he said. “I think it’s traditional to say ‘thank you, senpai,’ yeah?” He raised an eyebrow.

She rolled her eyes. “Thank you, senpai,” she said in her most saccharine voice, and bowed as far as the weight on her back would let her.

“Are you a new art student? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before, yeah,” he said, leaning against the wall of the building. It was mossy and kind of gross, but he was wearing old jeans and a shirt two sizes too big that was so stained it was hard to tell what colour it once might have been - he probably didn’t care much about his clothes.

“No, I’m waiting to meet somebody here,” she said. “But you definitely look like an art student.”

“What gave it away?” he asked, peering down at himself. He examined one hand, and she saw that despite his long, dextrous-looking fingers, his nailbeds were stained with something brown and chemical-looking.

Sakura was distracted by something rather different. “Where are your shoes?” she stared

He wiggled his bare toes. “I think I left them somewhere, yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe the dark room.”

Sakura was pretty sure you couldn’t get as messy as he was doing photography, but decided she didn’t know enough about art to comment.

The blond man looked back at her again. He didn’t have to look far down - he was only an inch or two taller than she was, which was a nice change. “You are a new student, though, yeah? I think I’d remember somebody with pink hair wandering around. Your eyebrows are the same colour, so it’s natural, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She touched her hair self-consciously. “I’ve been getting in trouble for having it ‘dyed’ for most of my school life,” she said with a half-smile. “I’m a med student. Just started. It’s...”

“A lot of boring work, yeah,” he suggested, scrunching up his nose.

“Well, not boring. But there’s a lot of classes and, yeah... a lot of work...” she trailed off. She checked the time on her phone. Itachi should arrive soon, at least. “Do you do some specific kind of art or something here?” she looked back at the building. “I don’t know anything about art, so it’s probably pointless to ask, but -”

From the way his blue eyes lit up she suspected that it was in fact not at all pointless to ask. “Everybody here has to develop their own vision, yeah. And your studio work reflects that, so... I guess, art’s kind of... it has a productive disagreement with itself, yeah? It’s in constant flux. I mean, maybe you can look at some boring old painting in the Louvre and be all like ‘Oooh, art, it's so old, it's so culturally significant!' but that’s not really what art _is_. That’s what art _does_ , for some people, that thing where you have to make your mark forever, I guess. For me...” he waved one stained hand a little wildly. “I think things are beautiful _because_ they’re ephemeral. So some kinds of disciplines are better at that than others, for me, yeah?”

“I could see that,” Sakura ventured thoughtfully. “Like, you wouldn’t be that interested in painting or, um, like, metalwork or whatever, would you?” She suspected she was about to sound very stupid, but she’d probably never even see this guy again - what would it hurt? “Like have you ever done flower arranging? I mean... because you make an arrangement, and it’s so still and harmonious, and there’s all these careful principles, but... the flowers decay, too. They die. And it changes? That’s ephemeral, right?”

He shook his head. “I don’t do any flower arranging, but I think it’s sort of in line with what I’m talking about, yeah. Except, that’s, like - that’s a slow decay, a day by day change. You’ve gotta get all that energy that goes into that decay, all the entropy and chaos and - and -” he brought his hands together, fingers twined, and then pulled them apart violently fast, “ _Bang_!” His lips curved. “Something like that, yeah.”

Sakura tilted her head. She couldn’t imagine it. “I don’t...”

“Fireworks,” he said, grinning.

“Huh,” said Sakura.

“And explosions,” he added, smile widening. He looked just a little too excited about that idea.

“I... see.” She wondered where the hell Itachi was. This guy was nice, she supposed, but - kind of weird.

“I didn’t scare you, did I?” the blond man asked, leaning forward into her space. His hair brushed her shoulder, and she imagined for a second that she could feel it through her blouse. He had white, even teeth and a terribly sweet smile. “It’d be a shame to scare away the first pretty girl I’ve gotten to talk to me in...” he trailed off, looking like he couldn’t remember such an occasion. He tapped his bottom lip in an exaggerated display of thoughtfulness.

Sakura fought off the urge to roll her eyes. She knew she was probably average at best in terms of her looks, and she sincerely doubted it had been that long since a much prettier girl had tried to chat him up, because he was pretty and charming and had really fabulous hair.

“I swear, I haven’t blown up anything really important since I was fourteen or something, yeah,” he said, batting his eyelashes a little.

She laughed helplessly. _Weird_ but kind of fun. “Oh, good,” she snorted. “Was that supposed to make me feel better somehow?”

“Well, it’s fine if you do it safely,” he said shrugging one shoulder and leaning back against the wall. He didn’t seem too determined to follow through on his flirting, which was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment. “Who are you waiting for, anyway?”

“Actually,” Sakura said as she recognised Itachi moving smoothly across the concrete toward her. “I think the people I’m meant to meet are here.” She waved.

Itachi was followed by a man who must have been four or five inches taller than him, broad and bulky with muscle. His skin was dark, and although he was covered nearly head to toe in clothing, Sakura could see that there was something kind of wrong with his mouth, something she couldn’t make out at a distance. As they came closer she realised the man had old scars, like poorly-done sutures to either side of his mouth. Poor man, she thought, trying not to stare.

“Really,” said the art student, raising his eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into his hair. “Fancy that, yeah.”

“Ah,” said Itachi, looking between them blank-faced but with a hint of amusement in his eye. “Sakura-san. I see you’ve met Deidara.”

Sakura blinked. She looked between them. “Ehh?”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment: Sakura meets Kakuzu, fears for her life, inspects her new home and makes the same mistake twice.

Itachi introduced the scarred man as Kakuzu, no surname given. He was significantly older than Sakura, which was something of a puzzle - he looked well and truly old enough to have graduated. Maybe he was just a slacker?

“Kakuzu-san has a bachelor degree in accounting and is currently studying a master of business law,” Itachi explained a moment later. Sakura nodded. That made more sense. “Sakura-san is a first year medical student. She is a friend of my brother’s. And you’ve met Deidara,” he added, nodding to the blond man.

“We’ve met, yeah,” Deidara agreed. “Although I didn’t realise she was going to be my housemate. Itachi, you didn’t say the person you were introducing would be a pretty girl, yeah,” he chided.

Itachi blinked, and then glanced at Sakura. He looked back to Deidara. “I didn’t,” he agreed in a neutral tone.

It could have meant anything, agreement, disagreement, scorn. Sakura suspected with a sinking gut that this was the point. Itachi seemed to follow that old adage about keeping one’s mouth shut if there was nothing nice to say.

Sakura was mortified, and flushed a shamefully bright red.

Itachi didn’t look at her again.

She was kind of grateful.

Deidara glanced between them and sighed. “Trust Itachi not to notice, yeah!” he said, bumping her shoulder with his gently. “There are also two other people living in the house, but they won’t come today,” he added to her, waving one hand. “But don’t worry about them, they’re pretty okay guys.”

Itachi looked seriously dubious at this statement, but he didn’t contradict it aloud. He glanced at his watch anyway. “I’m sorry, Sakura-san, I have a torts lecture in three minutes. Please call me if there are any problems,” he added.

“Ah - okay, thank you for your help, Itachi-san,” Sakura said weakly. She thought Deidara was weird but probably okay, but Kakuzu-san... well, he was a little bit intimidating. And huge. Seriously, he had to be over six feet tall. He completely dwarfed Deidara.

Itachi waved and left. Sakura looked after him, a little longingly.

“Are... is it just men, in the house?” Sakura asked a little hesitantly.

“Yeah.” Said Deidara. He peered at her curiously. “Is that bad?”

“The door on the empty room locks, Sakura-san,” said Kakuzu, eyeing her. “What’s your current financial status?” he demanded. “Are you employed?”

“Uh...” Sakura eyed him. That was very abrupt. Well, she supposed it was important that a potential housemate could pay rent and bills. “I had to resign from my job last week to move here, but I have some savings, and I have submitted my resume to a number of the local businesses so I hope to be getting some hours of proper work soon... if it takes too long for that, I’ll probably tutor some high school students in maths or science,” she added.

“Do you have a bank statement?” Kakuzu asked, holding out one hand.

“A... are you serious?” Sakura wondered. “Who the hell carries around a bank statement?” she blurted, scowling.

“I’ll also accept your most recent payslip,” he said.

He _was_ serious.

“Don’t worry about Kakuzu, Sakura-san,” Deidara said. “The housemate you’d be replacing had to leave because he refused to pay the rent. That’s why we need somebody on such short notice - none of us can cover the payments much longer.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s so irresponsible.”

“Hah, as expected from a medical student, yeah. Do you want to see the house?”

“I...”

Kakuzu looked thoroughly unimpressed. “Not until I see some proof that she can make the payments,” he said in a growl.

“What do you want her to do? Go to the bank and get a new statement? Don’t be stupid, yeah,” Deidara sighed. “She’s Itachi’s friend, I’m sure she’s good for it.”

“Itachi-san is friends with _you_ ,” Kakuzu pointed out, crossing his arms.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Deidara’s voice dropped, and his face darkened. He was still pretty, but there was a light in his eyes that Sakura wasn’t entirely certain she liked. She was glad the expression wasn’t directed at her.

Sakura held her hands up. “If there’s a bank around here, we can do that, Kakuzu-san. I thought you were being rude, but I guess if you’ve had bad experiences with previous housemates, it’s a reasonable thing to ask.”

“He would have asked that anyway, yeah,” muttered Deidara.

“You should have brought documents with you anyway,” Kakuzu said sourly, but he settled back on his heels and disengaged from his incipient confrontation with Deidara. “Which bank are you with? There’s a couple on campus.”

Sakura told him, and he nodded and began walking. He was confident as to where he was going, strides long and loose, even though people looked at him, flinched, and quickly looked away. She wondered what that was like.

“To be honest, I did the first few times I went to meet people about houses,” Sakura confessed as they walked, “but they all turned out to be...” she trailed off, not sure how to describe it.

“To be what?” Deidara tilted his head. He was keeping up easily, even though his bare feet had to be freezing on the concrete.

He was smiling again, all sweetness and light and faintly chemical smells. She felt like she’d almost imagined that unpredictable sense of danger before.

“Well, there were drug addicts... and perverts,” she scrunched her nose up. “One man said I could live with him only if I’d let him draw me naked. I mean, I’m not saying models are sluts or anything, but...”

“Oooh, creepy, yeah." Deidara laughed at her and then looked her up and down. It wasn’t an insulting look, more cautiously assessing. “That’s dumb, anyway. Modelling’s not actually that easy,” he said confidently. “If you haven’t done it before it can be really hard. You’ve gotta hold poses until they hurt like hell and you start shaking, and people never time them properly, yeah - they’ll say 'two minutes, dynamic pose’ and then ten minutes later they’ll freak out when you can’t hold it. I had a workshop once where my tutor wanted the model holding herself up by her fingers and toes only for fifteen minutes -”

“How much did he offer to pay you?” Kakuzu broke in.

“Pay me?” Sakura repeated, dragging her gaze away from Deidara’s animated hands.

Kakuzu turned his eyes on her. She hadn’t realised earlier, but they were extremely green. His expression seemed to indicate that he thought she was a moron. “Pay you. In money,” he clarified.

“I didn’t let him get that far!”

He grunted, and then seemed to lose interest entirely. “Do you play a musical instrument?”

“No?” She honestly had no idea where that question came from.

“Good. Smoke?”

“Mmm-mm,” she shook her head.

Apparently her willingness to answer was her downfall because Kakuzu took it as an invitation to rattle off question after personal question. Some of them were sensible, like whether or not she was accustomed to loud parties at all hours of the night. Others were... strange.

She thought ‘do you have any psychiatric problems that may pose a health hazard to your housemates’ was strangely specific but at least it made actual sense. But then he looked at her seriously and said: “Do you conduct any ritual slaughter of animals after midnight?”

“Excuse me?” her voice hit an entirely new pitch.

“I said -”

“She _heard you_ , you butthead,” Deidara said loudly over him, smacking him in the arm. “Stop it, you’re going to scare her away, yeah!”

Kakuzu looked between Deidara’s scowl and Sakura’s bewildered - and slightly concerned - expression. “Fine,” he said after a second. “If her bank statement checks out she can have the room.”

Deidara muttered something tremendously unflattering about Kakuzu’s mother and a dog, which Sakura pretended not to hear. Kakuzu sped up, lengthening his strides until he was ahead of them.

Deidara scratched the back of his neck. “He can be kind of intense, but he’s an all right housemate,” he said. “He pays everything on time, keeps track of all the bills and stuff, and he argues with the agent for us when they get angry. And he’s really quiet most of the time.”

Sakura nodded slowly. “Hey,” she said after a few seconds of walking in silence.

“Yeah?”

“Does that mean you can conduct ritual slaughter of animals _before_ midnight?” she wondered, watching the broad stretch of Kakuzu’s shoulders as he walked ahead of them. She could see his shoulder blades pressing against the material of his shirt when he moved.

Deidara flashed her his teeth. “As long as you clean up after yourself,” he laughed. She was almost certain he was joking.

After standing in line for ten minutes at the bank - during which Deidara wandered off to examine the posters on a noticeboard, loudly criticising their composition and annoying the student union representative who was trying to tape them up - Sakura finally managed to produce a bank statement that met with Kakuzu’s approval.

“That’s fine,” he said, and handed it back.

“Great,” Deidara called over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. “I can show her the room now, yeah?”

Kakuzu grunted and pulled a phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got a class,” he said. “Do what you want.”

Which was how Sakura found herself being tugged down to student parking by the elbow. “You have a car?” she questioned. “You live in a share house, but you have a car?”

“It’s shared, yeah,” he said, shrugging. “We all use it. Kakuzu has a bike, though. He can make his own way home.”

The car was - at one point - white. Now it was mostly white, but the front had been painted with a huge, reddish-brown spatter. It looked like somebody had been run down at high speed.

Sakura decided not to mention the paint job, and instead climbed into the passenger seat, swinging her backpack around so it sat on her lap. The interior had seen many, many better days. There were cigarette burns in the dash board, the handle for rolling down the passenger window was missing, and when Sakura looked up she saw that the inside cover for the roof was missing, so above them was a patchwork of foam and metal.

“It’s rustic, yeah,” said Deidara cheerfully, noticing her gaze.

She reached up and fingered the place where somebody had carved ‘BANG!’ into the foam. “Uh-huh,” she said, smiling a little.

The engine turned over on the second try and Deidara pulled out. “Hold on tight, yeah?” he said, grinning.

Deidara drove like a crazy person.

Sakura didn’t have her license, so she wasn’t certain, but she thought that maybe it was traditional to slow down before turning sharp corners.

She knew that people usually stopped at red lights, instead of slamming the accelerator and laughing wildly.

Sakura clung on for dear life, but she couldn’t contain a gasp and a shriek when they finally went from hurtling at a hundred km an hour to a complete stop with all the grace of a one-legged drunken ballerina and within about two seconds. “ _How do you even still have your license?_ ” she hissed.

Deidara smiled, bright and sudden and so wide it looked nearly painful. “Come on, Sakura-san~! That was fun, yeah.”

“ _I nearly died_ ,” she said, waving her arms.

“But you _didn’t_ ,” he pointed out, leaning into her space. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her jaw.

“I’d prefer not to risk it,” she said firmly.

“No? Isn’t your heart racing? It was exciting, yeah? Ne, Sa-ku-ra-san?” His glossy blue eyes glittered through a spill of pale hair, and for a second he was so beautiful it was hard to breathe.

Her heart was racing. “Exciting, in a kind of oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die way,” she said, turning her face away and playing it cool.

“That’s the best kind, yeah,” said Deidara, leaning back and getting out of the car. She noticed that he had not bothered to secure his seat belt. Was this what they called a ‘passive death wish’?

Sakura sighed and climbed out. She wondered if she really wanted to live with these people. Kakuzu was abrupt and kind of rude, but he at least seemed relatively well-grounded. Deidara was cheerful and really friendly, but she was increasingly sure he was actually a crazy person.

She wondered if she could put up with that.

The house was an extremely old one, narrow and several stories high. The houses on either side were of a similar design, but universally better-kempt.

There was a front garden, which was big, but it hadn’t been mown in a very long time. The white paint was peeling away, leaving the wood vulnerable to the weather. There was a tiny verandah guarded by a wooden railing, and as they climbed up three creaking steps to reach it Sakura could see that somebody had moved an old couch and several faded cushions onto the roofed area. There was a discarded wine bottle leaning against the wall.

The door seemed to have been repainted relatively recently by comparison, although the frame cherry-red and the door itself absolutely black and it didn’t even remotely match the rest of the house. In the middle of the black door, there was a white painting of a triangle inside a circle.

Sakura eyed it, but Deidara didn’t even seem to notice. He unlocked the door with some effort, putting his shoulder into it and shoving. It smacked against the far wall with a bang. He waved Sakura in, and she stepped over the threshold.

Immediately, she was confronted with a giant... swirly... orange... thing.

The swirly thing moved, and she realised that it was a lollipop only slightly bigger than her entire head.

“Deidara-senpai~!”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Deidara asked.

“Tobi has come to meet Deidara-senpai’s new housemate,” he said, beaming. He peered down at Sakura. He tilted his head, examining her carefully.

She returned the favour. He was striking, with huge dark eyes and long lashes, a straight nose and soft-looking lips. He smelled sweet, and was wearing a dark apron over his street clothes.   
He blinked at her, smiled brightly, and licked his lollipop. “You have pretty hair,” he told her.

“...thank you,” said Sakura, because she believed firmly that no matter how weird people were, good manners were welcome everywhere. “I’m Haruno Sakura,” she bowed a little, but he was so close she didn’t really have enough room.

His eyes widened. “Sakura-chan! It’s nice to meet you. I hope you can live here with everyone! You can call me Tobi-kun,” he said, and opened his mouth again, but he was interrupted by an explosion of temper from Deidara.

“HOW DID YOU EVEN GET INSIDE, YEAH?” he bellowed. Then, with a twitch, he smacked him over the head and added, “Don’t be so familiar!”

Tobi rubbed his head, pouting. “Ehh...” he held up a key. “Hidan-san said he’d tell Tobi something good if Tobi left him alone,” he said brightly. “Tobi is a good boy, so --”

“Hai, hai,” said Deidara, snatching the key away from him and rubbing his head as though he had developed a terrible headache in the last few minutes. “Tobi, Sakura-san. Okay, good, you’ve been introduced. Now get out,” he pulled him by the arm and shoved him toward the door.

“Ehh? But Tobi didn’t get to give Sakura-chan her lollipop!” he reached around Deidara’s head and waved another huge lollipop at her. Deidara was a lot shorter and slighter than him, and making him move through sheer weight seemed to be a challenge. “Tobi is learning to be a chef! Today we played with the confectioners’ thermome--”

Deidara hooked one heel behind Tobi‘s knee and sent him sprawling onto the verandah. “SHE DOESN’T TAKE CANDY FROM STRANGERS, YEAH!”

He slammed the door. The frame shook and the house creaked in protest.

Then he leaned against it, eyes wide, hair just a little wild, breathing hard. Exertion left a flush high across his cheekbones. Sakura had a horrible, terribly perverted moment of wondering if that was what he looked like when -

No.

No, Sakura.

“Ah... Tobi-san is...” she coughed.

“He’s an idiot. He doesn’t live here,” said Deidara, looking at the door with a thunderous expression. He dropped the key he’d taken from Tobi on a low table at the entryway. Then he deflated a little. “But he’s here a _lot_ so if you really hate him a lot, you probably shouldn’t live here.”

“He didn’t seem that bad,” she said. Compared to Gai and Lee, she thought, he was positively benign.

Deidara gave her a dubious look, like he wasn’t quite sure if she was joking or not. Then he seemed to shrug it off.

He showed her the house, which had narrow corridors and stairs but large rooms with surprisingly high ceilings. The kitchen had an old gas oven, which seemed to Sakura to require either two people, three hands or the loss of a limb to actually light, but it was surprisingly clean for a house of young men.

“There’s two bathrooms, yeah,” Deidara commented, pushing the door open, showing the cracked, ancient patterned tiles on the walls. There was a rusty stain on the old bath tub, but Sakura suspected it wasn’t the kind of thing that came off.

They went up the stairs, which were too narrow to allow them to go two abreast. “Nobody else is home right now, but that’s where Sasori-senpai is,” Deidara pointed at the door nearest the landing, “and Kakuzu is across from him. And up again,” he said, prodding her up another narrow flight of stairs.

The second floor of the house was smaller and creaked even more ominously. “Second bathroom,” he pointed.

Sakura poked her head in. It was much the same as the one on the ground floor, but markedly messier.

Also there were silky strands of shedded blond hair freaking everywhere. She pulled one that was stuck to the wall away and examined it for a second. “I guess you’re on this floor?”

“Hey, that’s not mine,” Deidara said. “It’s Hidan’s, yeah. Don’t blame me for his mess.”

“Wait, you both have long blond hair?”

“Yeah. Mine’s nicer, though,” he said confidently, shaking his bangs out of his eyes.

Sakura’d believe it. She was still kind of fighting the urge to run her fingers through it. It looked _so soft._ She touched her own hair self-consciously. “Would my room be somewhere up here?”

“This one, yeah,” he grabbed her arm and tugged her toward a room directly across from the bathroom.

It was broad, full of light, empty and mostly clean - really, it was just dusty, and there was a strange scorch mark on the floor. Somebody had left a free-standing mirror against one wall. There was a built in wardrobe which, when opened, revealed a single metal bar for hanging clothes.

“It has a balcony?” she asked, and then answered her own question by throwing open the doors with a squeal of protesting hinges. “Wow,” she said, stepping outside. It was a tiny balcony, really, probably only big enough for two or three people at best, but two floors up it had a surprisingly nice view of the backyard and the neighbourhood. It was pretty close to the balcony of the house next door, where somebody was growing a huge number of plants.

“It’s lovely,” she said, spinning around to look at Deidara, who was leaning against the doorframe. “I can’t believe it’s so cheap,” she said, eyeing him. “What’s wrong with it?”

“With the house? Nothing, yeah. Most houses are pretty cheap when you split the rent into fives,” he pointed out. “If you want it, you can probably just move in whenever. If Kakuzu doesn’t mind, the others won’t care at all.”

“Really?” she frowned.

“We need someone to pay the rent, yeah,” he reminded her. “Nobody’s going to care as long as you can front up the bond and a month’s rent straight away.”

Sakura nodded thoughtfully. Did she want to live here? She thought about it. It was definitely the best offer she’d gotten so far - and also, somehow, the cheapest. She could do this. Even if she didn’t manage to get a job for another couple of months, she’d probably be okay. And it wasn’t far from the university, either... “I think I’ll move in tomorrow, then,” she said firmly.

“Great,” said Deidara, clapping his hands. “I’ll tell Kakuzu to get the forms for the agent, yeah?”

Sakura’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out, punching in her unlock code as she answered. “Yeah, sure.”

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:02 PM  
Message body: OMG my roommate is insane. She plays the flute at three in the morning and won't take off her hideous purple rope-belt thing, I don't even know what's wrong with her. She has issues, Forehead. Issues.>

The most recent message was from Ino, but there was one she’d missed earlier, too.

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:22 PM  
Message body: TIL there is nothing scarier in the middle of a competition match than having the guy youre fighting start screaming that hes enjoying his youth>

She snorted back a laugh.

“Something funny, yeah?” Deidara didn’t look up from his own phone, where he was typing very quickly, letting Kakuzu know that she’d agreed to take the room.

“I think it would take too long to explain,” she said. “Anyway, I guess I’ll bring my stuff by tomorrow?”

He looked up and nodded. “Definitely, yeah. Tomorrow’s Wednesday so... somebody should be home. Sasori-san or Kakuzu, probably.”

They exchanged phones and each put in their own number. Sakura wasn’t sure what to put hers under, so she settled for her full name, but when she got her phone back she saw that Deidara had put his in under ‘Deidara-kun.’ She couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Do you want a lift back to wherever you’re staying now?” he asked as they approached the door.

“No!” she blurted. Then she coughed. “Uh, no. Thank you. I can catch the bus.”

“I _can_ drive slowly, yeah,” he said, sounding a little affronted. “I promise I’ll get you there in one piece.”

She really wasn’t sure how to get to the Nekketsu Dojo by public transport, and... well, she could feel the ugly stiffness growing in her legs from her exercising adventures that morning. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad...

“Can you?” she asked cautiously.

“Absolutely, yeah,” said Deidara, smiling. His smile was incredibly sweet, and looked very innocent.

“All right. Thank you.”

“No problem, yeah!”

 

* * *

 

Deidara could _not_ drive slowly.

In fact, Sakura was not one hundred per cent certain that he could drive at all.

“I am _never_ getting into a vehicle with you again,” she swore when they finally arrived.

He gave her a hurt look. “I stopped at the red light and everything, yeah," he complained.

“No," she said, getting out. “You really, really didn't.” Fear for her life warred briefly with her manners, and finally her manners won out. “Thank you for the lift, Deidara-kun,” she said. It was pretty bold to change the way she addressed him so quickly to something so familiar, especially since he was older than her, but, hey, he’d put it into her phone like that.

He gave her one last bright smile and shook his hair back from his face. “See you tomorrow, yeah!”

He waved vaguely out the driver’s side window as he pulled away from the curb without looking. Horns blared. His waving hand changed to a flipping-the-bird hand without missing a beat.

“I hope he gets home okay,” Sakura murmured, watching his car disappear down the road.

 

* * *

 

That night, as she lay awake in her sleeping bag on the cold wooden floor of the Nekketsu Dojo, Sakura’s phone buzzed once again. She reached for it.

<From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 10:01 PM  
Message body: Was everything all right?>

<To: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 10:07 PM  
Message body: Seems okay. I’m moving in tomorrow. How does Deidara-san still have his license?>

<From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 10:08 PM  
Message body: He doesn't.>

<From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 10:09 PM  
Message body: Please try not to get killed, Sakura-san.>

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This installment: Sakura goes to class, moves house; she finds herself alone in the dark of the morning and seriously regretting her decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating has abruptly risen to M for violence and, uh, weird sexual themes, I guess. There’s a scene with Hidan in which there’s a bit of gore and an inappropriate erection, so please read with caution.

Between starting new classes and finding somewhere to live, Sakura felt like she should have been tired out enough to sleep soundly. She didn’t. She ended up awake at quarter to one, flipping through Itachi’s text messages on her phone.

He hadn’t really texted her enough to warrant it. But he, and his friends, were on her mind.

She wondered if he thought about her anywhere near as often as she thought about him.

...she doubted it.

She was an idiot. Yes, he was cute. But he didn’t seem remotely interested in her, so she should just stop freaking thinking about him and his huge dark eyes and stupid deep voice.

And, well, screw him for being so quietly and gently _nice_.

Sakura covered her face with her forearm, shielding her eyes from the glow of her phone’s screen. She felt the weight of exhaustion behind her eyes, just waiting to press against her and drag her down. She closed her eyes, but the feeling was strangely elusive. Instead, she found herself contemplating the logistics of getting her stuff to the new house tomorrow, the identification she’d need to get herself added to the lease, whether she’d done enough reading on cardiovascular systems to get through her tutorial tomorrow...

She rolled over, blinked her eyes open, puffed out her cheeks and exhaled heavily.

Her phone said it was 1:07 AM.

Awesome.

A distraction was needed.

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:07 AM  
Message body: Have you tried asking her to not play her flute at three in the morning? What's Kaze-Capital like, anyway?>

Sometimes Ino was so focused on being devious that she missed the obvious solutions.

Sakura was startled by a buzz just a few seconds later.

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:08 AM  
Message body: i shouldn’t have to ask her! it’s obvious. the freaking noise that flute makes is a violation of the natural order and i am going to throw it in the bottom of the pool. i’ve heard chlorine’s really good for silver. >_< >

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:08 AM  
Message body: Kaze-Capital is awesome, as expected from any place where I reside. Also? OMG, go to sleep. >

She snorted softly. She had the feeling that Ino was not likely to get on with her room mate anytime soon. She wondered if she should text her about her own new housemates, but decided against it - Ino would just ask a million questions to which Sakura didn’t have the answers.

Somehow the familiar interaction between them soothed her a little, and Sakura found herself dropping off to sleep slowly but surely.

She was woken about four hours later, to the sound of the store room door banging open.

“SAKURA-SAN,” bellowed Gai-sensei, silhouetted against the light from the hallway.

“Mmmngh,” said Sakura.

An attempt to curl into a ball inside her sleeping bag caused every muscle in her legs to start screaming.

Sakura made a strangled noise.

“Sakura-san,” said Gai-sensei again, this time leaning down to tug her bag away from her face. “It’s time for our run!”

“I can’t,” she said flatly, staring blearily at him through a spill of messed up pink hair. He smiled and his teeth glinted.

Five AM. For god’s sake, why?

“My legs don’t work. You’ve broken them. Goodnight.” She tugged on the bit of sleeping bag that he was clutching, but he was an awful lot stronger and it didn’t come free.

His smile gentled a little. “You made such a good start yesterday, Sakura-san,” he said. “It would be a shame to give up now.”

“I’m absolutely willing to accept that,” she said flatly. “Shame. Shame on me. _Goodnight_ ,” and she tugged again, harder this time.

Outside the room, somebody laughed. Sakura suspected from the pitch that it was Tenten. “Doing it again will make it stop hurting,” she said loudly from the doorway.

Sakura eyed her. The other woman didn’t actually look much better off than Sakura was, sleepy and blurry-eyed. She heaved a giant sigh.

“You’d better not be lying,” she growled, unzipping the side of her sleeping bag with great reluctance.

“That’s the spirit!” Boomed Gai-sensei.

“I need to get changed,” she responded sulkily, and he flashed her another bright smile and a thumbs up before leaving her to dress in peace.

Putting on her clothes was an exercise in agony. Tying her shoelaces required that she bend down, forcing all her muscles to contract and expand, something they didn’t seem to enjoy much.

“Come on,” said Tenten sympathetically as she staggered out the door. “Once you warm the muscles up it won’t hurt nearly as much.”

“Aren’t you meant to have a rest day?” Sakura asked pathetically, descending down the dojo steps to the footpath with wincing steps.

“Sure,” Tenten agreed. “Rest day is very important. Today is not that day. Come on, it’s just a little run,” she tugged on her arm, forcing Sakura to move or fall over, despite her screaming muscles. It _burned_.

Sakura swore at her.

Tenten laughed.

That morning Tenten kept pace with her, letting the others go for their regular jog, which was significantly faster. Once again, they stopped and went back to a walk after every five minutes of jogging, and started up again once Sakura began to feel like her pulse wasn’t trying to leap out her throat.

It was true that as soon as she’d been jogging for a few minutes her muscles loosened and relaxed a little, but it was a terrible trade off. Her heart thundered, her feet hurt, she sweated. Her stomach was heavy and her mouth was dry and her eyes felt sandpapery.

She supposed she could just stop - stop running and refuse to move another step, be content with her sweat-slick skin and her heaving breath. Every time she thought she was going to do exactly that, Tenten managed to change her mind somehow.

“Just another minute and then we can walk again, okay?” she’d say, grinning over and keeping pace easily while Sakura staggered along with all the poise and grace of a bear emerging from hibernation.

And Sakura would think that another minute wasn’t that long, of course she could do another minute. And then she would.

“This really isn’t that bad, you know,” Tenten said, stretching her arms above her head during one of their walking periods.

Sakura, covered in sweat, heart thundering and hair stuck to her neck, glowered at her.

“No, I mean... a lot of people couldn’t start where you are. Some people start in two minute intervals. Or thirty second intervals, if they’re really bad. You’re doing okay.” She gave her an encouraging smile.

Sakura tried to feel like she wasn’t being patronised, but Tenten hadn’t even broken a sweat yet. “Okay,” she said shortly. She was so out of breath she could barely manage that.

When they returned to the dojo, however, Sakura had to admit - from her position laying on her back in the store room, blinking tiredly at the ceiling as her sweat stuck her to the floor - that she did feel a little bit accomplished. Exhausted, but accomplished.

Exercise was good for her, right? And she’d done a hell of a lot of it.

Well, for her. From the sounds outside the store room, Lee and Gai-sensei were already hard at work with their own regimen, which involved working hard for many hours a day. Tenten and Neji seemed more moderate, but not by much.

With a groan, Sakura rolled to her feet and went to shower, find some clothes and get ready for class.

 

* * *

 

 

Where Kabuto-sensei’s classes were informative, well-structured and dry and Shizune-sensei’s were tricky and really forced people to think, Tsunade-sama’s first class held the attention of every student. She was almost hypnotic.

She started by standing the front of the lecture hall looking like she was thoroughly prepared to be disappointed with them all. On the hour, she held up one hand for silence.

She got it.

“Clinical skills are all the skills that exist in the interaction between doctor and patient, which make up about a quarter of your mark for your entire course,” she said in her hard, flat voice. “What do you think is the most important thing a doctor does in clinical practice?”

There was silence.

She sighed. “You,” she pointed, picking apparently at random. “Answer me.”

The young woman flinched under the weight of Tsunade-sama’s gaze. “Er... make sure the patient understands what’s going on?” she suggested. “Telling them about the nature of their problem and that... sort of thing?”

“Not quite.” Tsunade pursed her lips. “You,” she pointed again, this time several rows higher up.

“Er... patient confidentiality?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Interesting. How about you?”

“Professional indemnity insurance?” said her next victim with a cynical expression. A few people laughed.

Tsunade’s expression changed to a small, frosty smile. The laughter stopped abruptly.

“No? Nobody?” she looked around, but nobody was game to actually try to answer. Finally, she brought one hand up and levelled it at Sakura. “You. What do you think is the most important thing a doctor does?”

Sakura blinked. “...Examining the patient?” she said hesitantly.

“Close.” Tsunade-sama’s smile warmed, just a fraction. “Haruno is half-right,” she nodded. “The most important things you will do with patients is take a history and examine them with your own hands,” she said in a ringing voice.

The hall was silent. Somebody shifted, paper rustled. It sounded very loud.

“The medical interview has a very important purpose. At its most basic, a doctor wants to know some - many - things about a patient, and the patient wants their physician to understand their problem. Executing an efficient and thorough medical interview is a skill.”

And now everybody was listening, watching her raptly.

“It is a skill you will learn, starting now.” There was no room for complaint or contradiction in her tone.

Sakura listened in silence, but she could feel her heart rate kick up every time her teacher’s gaze fell upon her. She had the feeling that Tsunade-sama was not a woman to be crossed.

For all that she was terrifying, her lecture was fantastic. She had a fierce command of her audience, and silence reigned every time she paused for breath. She was clear about her expectations, and equally clear that those students who did not meet them would not last long in her course.

Some of Sakura’s other teachers were... less helpful.

Mostly just one of them.

Most of the students left twenty five minutes into Kakashi-sensei’s lecture, because he hadn’t shown up yet.

It was Sakura’s last class for the day, and she tossed up whether or not she ought to leave for a few minutes. But the classroom was mostly silent, filled with students who barely knew each other fiddling with phones or laptops, so she took the opportunity to do some reading for Tsunade-sama’s next class - if she was going to be picking on random students, Sakura wanted to have at least some of the answers.

An hour later, a man appeared in the doorway, although he wasn’t Kakashi-sensei. He had a mop of soft-looking brown hair, a hard face and strange, staring eyes. He looked at the twenty or so students still remaining in the lecture theatre, heaved a sigh, and turned to the front of the room.

There, he rolled up the white screen used to display images from the projector, revealing the whiteboard beneath.

Then he glanced at a scrap of notepaper in his hand, heaved another huge sigh and began to write.

Sakura stopped reading her textbook and propped her chin in her hand, watching the words take shape.

“A doctor must be ready to face any new situation as it arises,” the text on the board read. “Explain the importance of rest days in preventing burnout.”

The man paused, looked down at the note again, and then drew a henohenomoheji under the phrase.

Then he turned to the class. “Your attention, please,” he said. The group had been waiting for so long that they went quiet almost immediately. “I’m Yamato, a postgraduate student under the... supervision of Hatake Kakashi-sensei,” he introduced himself with a short bow. “Kakashi-sensei will be unable to make it to class today. Please complete the assignment and then leave whenever you’re ready.”

And then he turned and walked out.

Sakura eyed the board, frowning.

That might have been fine, except fifteen minutes later Sakura saw Kakashi-sensei sitting in a tree on the university grounds, reading and throwing twigs at Yamato’s head when he tried to get the older man’s attention.

She shouldered her bag more firmly and walked up to stand next to the postgrad student. “Yamato-senpai,” she said, eyeing Kakashi in his tree, “is he always like this?”

He turned his mournful, staring eyes on her. “Sometimes he’s worse,” he said.

“A...ah,” she said. “Is there an attendance requirement for his class?”

“Yes,” Yamato said. “Eighty percent.”

Eighty percent, Sakura thought with a flash of irritation. “How does he still have a job?”

A twig hit her in the shoulder. “He can hear you, Student-san,” Kakashi called down. He was still wearing that stupid scarf over his mouth, coupled today with an eyepatch. He looked like a scruffy highwayman, or maybe some kind of pirate.

He slid down from the tree in a shower of leaves and twigs, none of which seemed to get stuck in his hair, although Sakura could already feel a warning tickle at the back of her throat. She really needed to start carrying allergy medication everywhere.

He pocketed his book - which had a luridly bright cover with a man chasing after a lady on the front - and leaned down to eye-level with her. His visible eye crinkled into a little smile. “Also, he has tenure.”

Sakura gaped at him, speechless.

He patted her on the head and then shoved his hand into his pocket. “Have a good rest day, Student-san!” he called, waving over one shoulder as he walked away.

He was probably lucky he was already walking away, because this was when a surge of rage rolled through her and the urge to beat his face in almost overwhelmed Sakura.

“Ah! Kakashi-senpai!” Yamato darted after him, trailing twigs and paper.

Sakura glowered at the retreating pair. Yamato seemed to sense her ire, because he kept looking warily over his shoulder at her.

Kakashi-sensei. That lazy _ass_. How did he end up in a permanent position at one of the best universities in the world? Muttering darkly to herself, Sakura stormed off toward the bus stop.

 

* * *

 

 

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen

Timestamp: 2:58 PM  
Message body: I MADE THE NOODLES TODAY. Shishou said they were good enough for customers! I’m on my way to becoming a ramen MASTER, Sakura-chan!>

Sakura snorted. Well, at least that meant that poor old Teuchi-san was one step closer to retiring.

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:02 PM  
Message body: Good work! Got a pic? I'm moving into my new place today. Wish me luck.>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:02 PM  
Message body: Ne, ne, where are you moving to?>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:03 PM  
Message body: Can I come visit?>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:03 PM  
Message body: Are your new housemates creepers? DO YOU WANT ME TO BEAT THEM UP FOR YOU, SAKURA-CHAN?>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:04 PM  
Message body: SAKURA-CHAN WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING MY MESSAGES?>

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 3:09 PM  
Message body: I AM TRYING TO MOVE HOUSE GO AWAY.>

 

* * *

 

When Sakura finally dragged herself and her packed suitcase and backpack all the way to her new home, her legs were screaming again. She cursed Gai-sensei and Tenten - and even Lee and Neji, because they were too enthusiastic and _a jerk_ , respectively - with every step.

She hauled herself up the steps with a series of thuds and smacked the palm of her hand on the black-painted wood three times.

There was a noise from inside, the quick thud of footsteps, and then the door swung open. It revealed a man who was barely five foot three, doll-like and pale with heavy-lidded eyes and careless auburn hair. He was dressed in dark jeans and an oversize t-shirt that had seen better days and was then in the process of slipping off one shoulder. His hands were stained with some kind of black grease.

“Haruno Sakura?” His face gave away absolutely nothing.

“Sasori-san, was it?” she said carefully. Deidara had said either Kakuzu or Sasori would be home, so unless Kakuzu had shrunk by the better part of a foot in her absence, this had to be Sasori.

He nodded silently and held the door open. She pulled her things inside after her and then heaved a sigh. “Was there a key for me?” she inquired.

“Kakuzu has it,” he said in a voice that was older than he looked. “You should go ask him.” Then he trailed off down the hallway, leaving her alone in the dim entrance with her things.

“Friendly,” she muttered.

Then she began the laborious process of getting her suitcase up two flights of stairs. Once she had dumped her case in the broad, empty room reserved for her, she returned to the first floor. There she paused to catch her breath and stretch her aching legs.

She knocked on the door she thought was Kakuzu’s. He was about as communicative as he had been the previous day, directing her back downstairs to the kitchen with as few words as possible.

“Here,” he said, handing over a transfer of bond form and a form for her addition to the rental agreement.

They looked pretty standard: no weird clauses, no nasty surprises. “You’re allowed pets,” she said with her eyebrows rising. “That’s unexpected.”

“No,” said Kakuzu, who had his back turned to her, leaning against the old sink. “You’re not.”

“I don’t have any pets,” she said exasperatedly, signing the bond transfer form with a flourish. “I just meant that I’m surprised that it’s on the form, Kakuzu-san. Most places seem like they have a clause against that.”

“Are you done?”

She eyed him. “Fine,” she agreed, and quickly scanned and initialled all the pages on the rental agreement before signing her name off at the bottom.

Kakuzu snatched it off her, lightning-fast. “I’ll make you a copy,” he said in his low, flat voice, and the paper disappeared somewhere on his person.

Then came a terrifying five minutes during which Kakuzu sat across from her, stared at her with his cat-green eyes and rattled off all the information she could possibly need about payment details, when payments should be made, and other minutia of their living arrangement.

“When bills come in, I divvy them up,” he said flatly. “If you have any complaints about which proportion of the bills are paid by whom, you can take them up with me. I trust there will be no problems,” he said in a tone indicating that there had _better_ be no problems.

“As long as it’s fair, Kakuzu-san,” she said in a level voice, “there will be no problems.”

He looked at her unblinkingly for a second, and then nodded. “Good. Your key,” he said, dropping it on the table in front of her with a sharp noise.

She took it and deftly attached it to her key ring.

“I expect a copy of your bank transfer confirmation by the end of the week,” he said on his way out of the kitchen.

Sakura pursed her lips, wondering if she shouldn’t just tell him that her payment details would be between her and their agent - but after a second she decided against it, and let her silence be construed as consent.

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 6:13 PM  
Message body: Of course you can visit, stupid. It’s three hours away, so make sure you plan ahead. Actually, you can bring me my bed from storage... since you’re coming anyway. :) >

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 6:18 PM  
Message body: Whaaaaat? Sakura-chan, that's not fair.>

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 6:19 PM  
Message body: I’ll notify the storage manager. ;) >

 

* * *

 

  
In hindsight, she would realise that it had all happened very quickly, and that her housemates’ haste was very much on purpose. One day she was virtually homeless, and the next she was signed onto a lease for a year with three people she’d just met and one she was completely unfamiliar with.

It had all been rather carefully manipulated to avoid her meeting with Hidan until  _after_  the papers were signed.

But at three o’clock in the morning when Sakura was woken by what sounded like a person screaming in utter, abject terror, she had no idea what was going on.

She jerked awake and stumbled out of her sleeping bag. Was somebody hurt? Injured? She staggered blearily into the hallway, where one of the lights was still on. The screaming was coming from the room just a door down - not Deidara’s. This was the room of the housemate she hadn’t met yet.

Sakura paused, wondering if she should really barge in. Her heart pounded. Would she need to use her first aid skills? What if it was really bad? She should have brought a first aid kit - or at least her phone.

She reached out and knocked, but she was only answered by another blood-curdling scream.

That was it. It sounded like somebody was being _murdered_. She shoved open the door.

A startled squawk cut through the screaming. “What the _fuck_ \--?”

Sakura saw a flash of naked white skin, ropy muscles, pale hair and strange reddish eyes - and then everything was obscured when about a hundred and ten kilograms of frightened, bleeding goat slammed into her.

“Shit!” Sakura pinwheeled her arms, flailing wildly as she went down beneath a terrifying ball of screaming, flying hair and hooves and horns.

The goat stomped on her hand once, hard enough that she shrieked, and then staggered to its hooves, shook itself, and careened down the hallway.

“Fuck! Don’t let it _go_ , you stupid bitch!” Bellowed the naked and rather bloody man, leaping over her prone form - she closed her eyes, there was - there were _parts_ dangling and bouncing, there really were - and sprinting down the corridor after the goat.

She rolled, wide-eyed, just in time to see the bloody naked crazy man tackle the screaming goat in the middle of the corridor. There was a terrible clatter as they both went down, followed by some really creative swearing.

From downstairs there was a thump, and Sakura winced. That sounded like either Kakuzu or Sasori was awake. Although how anybody could sleep through _that_ , she had no idea.

“Fuck!” shrieked the naked man, waving one bleeding hand. “You fucking piece of shit!”

The goat screamed again, flailing its hooves under his weight.

Deidara’s door slammed open, ricocheting against the wall, and he stalked out. “WHAT THE HELL, HIDAN?”

“Fucking bitch ruined my sacrifice! Don’t just lay there!” he yelled back over his shoulder at Sakura. “Get your dumb ass over here and help me hold the fucker down!”

Deidara looked between them and the goat. “It’s too early for this shit, yeah.” He rolled his eyes and stalked back into his bedroom, slamming the door after him.

Sakura rolled to her feet and inched closer. “Just hold his fucking back legs, would you?” the pale - naked! - man yelled to her.

That seemed okay, she decided. She could probably do that. The goat wasn’t what you’d call a small animal, but it wasn’t really horse-sized either. She grabbed hold of one hoof - her hand ached as though - oh, as though a goat had trampled it, perhaps - but she managed to catch the other one in her other hand, and she held on for dear life as the animal thrashed.

Somehow, the naked man had managed to wrestle the goat into submission. He began beating its head against the wooden floor with a THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, pausing only occasionally to see if it was still screaming.

Eventually, it wasn’t.

Then it was just Sakura in her pyjamas, the naked and bleeding man, and an unconscious goat.

The man sighed in something like relief. “Guess the ritual’s not entirely ruined, after all,” he said, standing up.

Sakura clutched harder at the goat’s hooves and averted her eyes. She was on the floor and he was standing up, and there was a penis _right there_ , right at eye level.

She cringed.

“Are you going to let go any time soon?” he wondered. Something poked her in the forehead.

She jerked her eyes up, bypassing the dangly bits entirely. But they were still there. They were so there.

“For fuck’s sake, are you broken?” He poked her again.

“WHY ARE YOU NAKED?” she shrieked, covering her eyes.

He started to laugh. His laughter continued for some time, edging into this strange high cackle like a rusty hinge. “This ritual’s gotta be done naked," he managed finally, between shrieks of mirth. "Come on,” he added, disengaging her hands from the goat and dragging it by one hoof. He had to have been very strong to manage that.

The limp, hairy body moved sluggishly past Sakura where she was still sitting on the floor with her legs sprawled awkwardly. She could feel the living heat of it, see its ribs move as it breathed.

“Are you coming or not?” he yelled over his shoulder, pausing at the door of his room. “You interrupted the ritual, so you’re a part of it now. Don’t make me fucking drag you, too.” He pulled the goat in.

Sakura sat there, blinking. It was _three am_. How was this her life?

About thirty seconds later, she could hear the padding of naked feet on the floor. “Up we get,” he said, shoving his hands under her arms and hauling her to her feet. She’d been right, he was strong.

“I don’t -” she wriggled.

“Oh, no,” he said, wrapping one lean-muscled, white arm around her waist and lifting her up entirely, “you’re not fucking going anywhere. You barged in like a fucking retard and you can make it up to me.”

She could feel the whole naked length of him pressed against her back and she wanted to either die or just combust out of sheer mortification.

Don’t think about the penis. _Don’t think about the penis._

She was thinking about the penis.

Her face was on _fire_.

His room was huge - bigger than hers, even. It had seen better days, walls cracked and floors stained, and in one corner was a huge bed. Seriously huge. It looked soft and decadent and about four hundred per cent more comfortable than Sakura’s sleeping bag on the ground.

But dominating the whole space was the bloody giant symbol in the middle of the floor: a circle framing a triangle. And inside that triangle lay the unconscious goat.

The naked man kicked the door shut behind him and pushed, prodded and manhandled her over toward the goat. “Sit,” he said brusquely, shoving her toward the goat.

“Are you some kind of psychopath?” she wondered in a tone that sounded astonishingly detached, even to her, looking around the room.

“I’m a man of god,” he corrected her loftily.

“You’re naked and bleeding,” she said, still feeling a little bit shocked by the whole ordeal.

“Yep,” he agreed. He passed her a long-bladed knife, hilt first. “Hold this.”

Well, at least he wasn’t cutting her with it. She held onto the handle.

He wrapped his hands around hers - bloody, slick hands, warm and rough from working with his hands - and she tensed against him as she realised what he was about to do. “Oh my god, no,” she hissed, but he was much stronger than her.

There was some monstrous-sounding language rolling off his tongue, syllables that her brain couldn’t quite hold onto, liquid and despairing and strangely sweet. She didn’t understand a word of it and certainly couldn’t have repeated any, and she flinched violently when the sharp blade bit into the meat of the goat’s neck.

The words went on.

The naked dude was shaking now, all of his limbs alive with a fine trembling, his face flushed high across the cheekbones. Blood spurted and spread in a puddle, bright red where it first hit the outside air.

Staring at where her hands were struggling against his, she could see exactly the moment when he became way too interested in the proceedings and his penis twitched to life. Mortified, Sakura looked straight back up - and into his face, where his lips were wet and parted, his pupils huge and dark.

There was hot blood seeping down her legs, soaking into her pyjamas. His voice dropped and roughened when he met her gaze over the bloody goat. She was caught up in the soft, hot liquid noises of whatever language he was speaking.

Oh, this was so incredibly wrong.

His voice stopped. His eyes rolled into the back of his skull, and the next noise he made wasn’t a word at all, it was just a soft ecstatic sound, like he’d found the best thing ever and he wanted more of it.

Heat prickled up her spine. She could feel her nipples stiffen under her shirt.

No. Nope, nope, nope. She _yanked_.

Bloody, his grip slipped, and her hands came loose. She stumbled to her feet, backing away from him and his weird dead goat fetish, and he looked up at her and smiled, wide and not very sane.

She fled. “Have a nice night, babe,” he purred in a heavy, sleepy voice that carried after her, and she slammed his door.

Sakura went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and stripped naked from her bloodied clothing. There was blood on her skin - blood in her hair - and she quickly put her clothes back on and went across the corridor into the bathroom.

There she took a shower for half an hour.

“Oh my god,” she muttered to her toes and the steam. “Oh my _god_.” Then, “I just killed a goat?” It came out sounding like a question.

She scrubbed her hands through her hair until the water ran clean and she finally stopped shaking.

Sakura suspected she’d made a terrible mistake.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This installment: Sakura has a weird conversation with her neighbour, kind of accidentally does drugs, isn’t quite sure whether she regrets inciting some violence and uses the phrase 'made me _sacrifice a goat_ ,' with alarming frequency.

 

It was nearly four in the morning when Sakura left the bathroom, wrapped in her fluffy blue towel and finally feeling clean. Everything was dark and still in the corridor. There was no indication that only an hour ago a frightened goat had been chased by a madman across this very floor.

It seemed like some crazy figment of her imagination, a thing that could not possibly be real. She glanced toward Deidara’s door, wondering if he was still up. There was no light leaking out from around the edges, so probably not. That was a pity: she could have used the company.

At some point between the day before yesterday and right that second, Deidara had begun to seem more comforting than weird and crazy. Probably because the other people in the house were taciturn and unfriendly, or...

She wondered if her other housemate had gone to bed still covered in dried goat’s blood.

She wondered what he was going to do with the _goat_.

Because presumably there was a dead goat somewhere here.

She went into her room, closed and locked the door behind her, and hung up her towel before pulling on some clean clothes. She’d found a bucket in which to soak her pyjamas but she kind of suspected they’d be a write off. Blood could be pretty hard to get out of fabric.

Unsurprisingly, Sakura couldn’t sleep. She tiptoed out onto her balcony and sat down in the cool night air, fiddling with her phone. She wanted to text somebody, to come out and say ‘so my housemate just made me kill a goat,’ just to have said it aloud - metaphorically aloud, put out into the ether somewhere, just to communicate with another person who could reassure her that this was, indeed, fucked up - but she wasn’t sure who she’d tell.

Ino or Naruto would flip out. Sasuke... Naruto seemed to answer ninety per cent of his texts, so there was a good chance Naruto would find out if she texted him, too.

And that was it for her closest friends.

Tenten or Lee would probably want her to return straight to the dojo.

Her mother was right out.

Itachi...

No, these were his friends. She shouldn’t text him complaining about them when he’d been the one to warn her that she might not enjoy living with them.

Although honestly maybe he could have been a little clearer about his warning.

At no point did he mention _anything_ about sacrificing a goat.

She stared contemplatively at her neighbour’s balcony garden, blinking back the burning feeling of too little sleep from her eyes. Among the plants was what looked in the moonlight to be a broad pot of poppies, and one large, upright plant with bell-shaped, purple-green flowers and glossy black berries that seemed to smell faintly sweet.

It was really quite pretty.

“You’re up very late.”

Sakura jumped and looked around wildly.

There was a very soft laugh, one that seemed to come from everywhere all at once and hung in the air. The person’s voice was soft and polite. A shadow detached itself from where it had been hugging the wall on the neighbouring balcony.

There was the silky whisper of an clothing. Her neighbour moved very gracefully to lean on the ledge of the balcony, cradling a steaming cup.

“Were you party to all that noise earlier?” the person asked. It was impossible to determine a facial expression in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” she said wearily. “It was very unexpected. Did we wake you?” Sakura really didn’t know if the person was male or female, and she didn’t really want to accidentally use the wrong form of address, so she tried to just... avoid it.

“No,” her neighbour waved one hand. In the brief flash of a silhouette it was a nice hand: long, deft fingers, beautifully tapered, broad palms. The skin was very dark. It didn’t bring Sakura any closer to determining the person’s correct pronouns, though. She was leaning toward male, but she wasn’t sure. “It sounded dramatic for your first night in a new house.”

“My... oh,” she blinked, realising that whoever this person was, she or he knew that Sakura had moved in only that day. She tried to shrug off the feeling that this was creepy - this person lived right next door and had probably seen her dragging her things inside.

“He made me kill a goat,” she blurted. “I think he really liked it. Like, _really_ liked it.”

She heard her neighbour’s tongue click in disapproval. “That’s a strange hobby,” said the voice.

Her neighbour leaned forward, and in a strip of moonlight she saw a very pale, harsh face, strangely coloured - one side seemed to sink more deeply into the shadows. She wondered if he had some kind of rare pigment disorder... but his face was definitely a man’s.

She decided to just ignore his strange appearance because there was basically nothing weird enough to top what her night had already been like. “I have no way to relate to whatever just happened in there,” she admitted aloud, tucking some hair behind her ear.

She wiggled her bare toes, staring at them. Her skin looked pretty pale, drained of all colour by the silvery moonlight.

He made a noise that was somewhere between sympathetic and darkly amused. “Perhaps you should look at it this way: killing is the way of things for humans. Don’t you eat meat?”

“Well, yes,” she said, shrugging. Then she shook her head. “It’s not that the goat is dead,” she said slowly, thinking it through herself, “it’s that he got off on it.”

There was a long, considering pause.

“The practices of Hidan-san’s religion are sometimes... alien,” he said, quiet and polite and not entirely certain-sounding.

“It’s insane,” she muttered. Then she scrubbed her eyes with her hands, willing away their burning. This would be her second night in a row of sleeping only a few hours. She felt exhausted. “Sorry,” she said around a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m really tired, but I don’t think I can sleep.”

Her neighbour tilted his head. His eyes glinted yellow under the moon. “Here,” he said after a long moment’s pause, holding out his tea cup. “This tea will help you sleep. I take it for myself on bad nights.”

She glanced at the steaming cup, and then back at her locked door. It wasn’t like anybody could come in if she did happen to fall asleep. And sleep... would be comforting.

In general, she thought, taking random drinks from strangers wasn’t necessarily a good idea. But he’d already had it out there, and it wasn’t like he’d been expecting four am company - if _he_ was going to drink it, it couldn’t be that bad for her, surely?

And it would be nice to sleep and just... think about all this in the morning.

“What’s in it?” she asked carefully, accepting the cup from his outstretched hand. This one was paler than the hand she’d seen earlier. She frowned at it. A trick of the light? She shook it off.

“Just a herbal remedy,” he said in his strange, soft voice. “A tea I brew myself from these plants here,” he added, waving one arm.

“They’re very pretty,” she said, nodding toward the tall plant with the black berries that she’d been admiring earlier.

Cautiously, she sipped the tea. It tasted bitter, but warm, and it did seem to be sort of soothing.

“That’s nightshade,” said the man, following her gaze. “You wouldn’t necessarily put it in tea,” he added drily. Then his voice changed a little and with a slightly unpleasant laugh, he qualified: “Not the tea of anybody you liked, anyway.”

She snorted, glancing down at her own tea. It didn’t seem to have the same sweetness that came from the big nightshade tree. “So it’s poisonous,” she said, feeling only a little pang of concern. She didn’t really think he’d poison her. He barely knew her. What would be the point?

“Yes and no,” he said, sounding contemplative. “It’s been used as a pain reliever and a sedative for thousands of years. Even now, some of the extracted alkaloids are used in modern medicine...” his voice trailed off, and when he spoke again it had a harder sound, “But, yes, it is toxic. Most things are, if you have enough of them.”

Sakura, feeling kind of floaty and happy, nodded. She sipped her tea, surprised to notice that it was almost finished. His voice was incredibly soothing.

“That guy...” she said, heaving a sigh. It seemed kind of difficult to worry about him, when she was out here on a fine cool night, feeling warm from the bones out, content and hazy. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone in and opened the door,” she muttered.

“Why did you?”

“The goat was screaming. It sounded like he was being hurt. I thought he might need help,” she said slowly. Her tongue felt heavy.

Her neighbour just laughed. This one was a startled, raspy sound - less teasing and more cynical. “You should have left him. The happy endurance of extreme pain is one of the core tenets of of his religion. It’s ridiculous.”

“That’s disturbing,” she mumbled.

“The cycle of sin and suffering and redemption is prevalent in many religions. Jashinism just mixes up the order a little. Religion’s all a bit silly, anyway,” he added more gently, stroking a leaf of his nightshade plant reverently. “You can hardly expect it to make sense.”

A disgusted sound rumbled from his throat, and then he clicked his tongue chidingly.

She sighed heavily. He was probably right. Maybe this would be less disturbing in the daylight, after she’d gotten some sleep.

Abruptly, she found her neighbour holding out one of those strange, bell-shaped flowers to her. “They say that nightshade only blooms in the dark,” he said conversationally, watching her with hooded golden eyes.

“Does it?” she asked drowsily, taking the flower. It was faintly scented. Sweet. She inhaled.

His lips twisted, highlighted by the unkind shadows of the moon. He looked like some pale, hard-faced ghost peering out of the darkness at her. “No. But it does like shade. And it’s very poetic, isn’t it?”

He reached out to her again, long fingers looking black in the moonlight. “I think you’d better go to bed now.”

It took her almost five seconds of blank staring before processed the thought and put the cup back in his hand. She did not give him back the flower. It was nice. “Thank you. I don’t know what’s in that tea, but it...” she blinked once, slowly, and lost time somewhere.

Distantly she could hear him laughing his soft sweet laugh. Teasing, yes, and kind of smug - like he knew something she didn‘t. “Go to bed,” he said, more firmly, retreating from the railing of his balcony until the shadows swallowed him.

The leaves of the nightshade plant shuddered gently in the breeze.

She staggered inside, feeling calm and exhausted, and slumped on top of her sleeping bag. She didn’t have the energy to make it all the way under the covers.

 

* * *

 

When she woke again, it was to a cool breeze and midmorning sunlight streaming through the door, sprawled across her sleeping bag, which was stuck to her face with drool.

She squinted at nothing, feeling hazy and lethargic.

Tea, she thought, blinking. “What the hell was in that tea?” she muttered, fingers scrabbling across the wooden floor for her phone. It was 10 AM, which meant that she had already more or less missed the first class of the day, which was an 8 AM start. If she left now, she might -maybe, if the public transport gods were kind - get there in time for the last half hour.

She groaned, burying her face in the cushiony softness of her sleeping bag.

Dammit.

She felt too lazy and heavy to go get her laptop, so she looked her timetable up on her phone. This morning’s was Shizune-sensei’s class, so as long as she caught up on the material, there probably wouldn’t be a problem. Probably.

She dropped the phone to her sleeping bag and sat up, rubbing her hands through her hair and over her face.

“Herbal remedy, my _butt_ ,” she muttered, thinking back to her surreal conversation with her neighbour. She had no doubt that whatever he’d given her was, in fact, made of some kind of herb or flower - but then, so were a lot of things. A lot of illegal things.

Maybe she should have paid more attention to whatever her neighbour was growing on his balcony.

She groaned. Her next class wasn’t for hours. She had intended to spend the time in between classes in the university library, writing out notes for Kabuto-sensei’s next class, which was something about Mendelian inheritance.

She unlocked her door and staggered downstairs, hoping that she’d be able to avoid Crazy Goat Sacrifice Naked Man of God on her way.

She hadn’t remembered to buy herself any groceries yet, and she doubted that any of her new housemates would be okay with her stealing theirs, but water was a thing she could have. She fumbled around for a glass, discovered that there were no glasses despite the relative cleanliness of the kitchen, and grabbed a mug instead.

“Use the red one, yeah? Sasori-senpai’s possessive.”

Sakura blinked. She hadn’t even noticed Deidara perched on the table, watching her over a steaming cup of coffee. He wore rumpled well, with messy hair and heavy eyes and a sleepy little smile.

Of course, messy hair on Deidara looked like the kind of “mess” that might take a person with lesser hair several hours and about seven different products to achieve.

Sakura had absolutely no doubt he’d rolled out of bed looking like that.

Obediently she grabbed the red mug, which was actually a bright red ceramic owl with a cup-shaped hold in its head. She peered at it. “Is that yours? That’s so cute.”

“I made it,” Deidara said, lips pulling back from his teeth. “There’s a couple of them laying around here... the kiln didn’t fire evenly so I couldn’t use them for my project,” he shrugged.

It didn’t seem too bad to her - there were a few hairline cracks, but when she filled it up with water it didn’t leak. “It’s still pretty good,” she pointed out, examining it. The owl looked kind of angry.

He shrugged indifferently. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

She yawned widely, leaning against the sink. “I overslept,” she admitted. Then she gave him a very unhappy look. “When we were talking about why it was so cheap to live here and you said there was nothing wrong, you sure didn’t bring up how your other housemate gets off on killing animals.”

“Well, of course not, yeah,” Deidara said, raising his eyebrows. “I said there was nothing wrong with the _house_. You didn’t ask about Hidan.” He snorted. “If I didn’t have work to finish, I might have the time to begin listing all the things wrong with _Hidan_.”

Sakura thought this was probably a fair statement, but it didn’t help her any. “It was implied in the question,” she growled darkly.

“Should have been more specific, yeah,” he said, grinning at her over the cup. “Now you’re stuck with us.”

“Deidara-san,” she said flatly, “he carried me to his room and shoved me into his creepy blood circle and sat there - _naked_ \- and held onto me and he _made me kill a goat_.”

Deidara’s smile faded. “Aw, hell,” he muttered. “I didn’t think he’d actually drag you off to do that stupid ritual with him. That idiot.” He ran one hand through his hair, which tumbled smoothly away from his face.

“Who’s an idiot?”

They both looked up as Kakuzu entered the kitchen. He was dressed from neck to toe in dark colours once again, despite the nice weather. Sakura thought maybe the scars on his face weren’t the only ones. She moved aside when he approached the sink, watching him fill the bottom segment of a tiny percolator with cold water.

“Hidan, yeah,” said Deidara immediately. “He made Sakura-san kill a goat.”

Kakuzu paused, brow furrowing, and then seemed to shake it off. He grunted and continued to make his coffee.

One of Deidara’s eyebrows twitched. He looked annoyed for a second, and then he seemed to think better of it. Sakura watched, just a little fascinated, as his lips curved into a tiny, wicked smile. “I was just telling her that if she _really_ wanted to move out, the paperwork wouldn’t be put in by the bond board yet. She could still get it stopped and _get her money back_ , yeah. Couldn’t she, Kakuzu?”

Kakuzu looked at Deidara with a heavy, pissed off gaze. Then he looked back at Sakura. “Is that so,” he said slowly.

Deidara winked at her from the side of his face that Kakuzu couldn’t see.

“Well,” she said slowly, looking uncertainly between them. “I don’t mind the rest of you, but I didn’t really... expect...” she trailed off.

Kakuzu glowered. He had a really scary glare, one that made Sakura clutch her owl mug a little tighter.

“That idiot,” said Kakuzu darkly, putting his percolator down half-filled. “Stay there,” he barked at Sakura, and then stormed out of the kitchen.

Kakuzu-san, Sakura thought, listening to the house complain subtly as his feet hammered up the stairs, didn’t have a lot of social skills.

This thought was confirmed when she heard something go _thump_ on the second floor so hard she could feel the vibration under her feet. She looked at Deidara with wide eyes.

He grinned cheerfully. “Don’t worry Sakura-san,” he said cheerfully, talking over another thump and ignoring the way the light fixture swung in sympathy with the house’s ominous shuddering. “Hidan’s an idiot. We’ll get it sorted out. We have to take care of our new housemate or she might run away, yeah?”

Somewhere far above them, glass shattered. She slowly raised her gaze to the ceiling.

There was some indistinct howling, interspersed with another crash and some more heavy-sounding thumps.

Deidara’s smile didn’t dim. If anything, he looked somehow more satisfied.

Sakura stared down at her water, wincing with every noise. Amidst the sounds of raised voices, she made out the phrases “interrupted my ritual,” “fuck your rent,” and, after a moment, the sudden shriek of: “Let go of me, you psychopath!”

None of this seemed to go down very well with Kakuzu, if the ongoing crashes and thuds were any indication. Sakura strained to hear him, but the rumble of his voice was too deep to carry the way Hidan’s did as it soared into an enraged shriek.

There was a sudden silence.

That was ...ominous.

Kakuzu reappeared a few minutes later. His hands were stained bloody, and there was an ugly gash across one side of his face. His breath was coming only a little faster. He fixed Sakura with his unblinking gaze.

“It won’t happen again,” he said in a voice that sounded calm, even and very final.

There was a pause.

Deidara started to whistle a cheerful tune.

“You’ll stay here,” said Kakuzu in the same tone.

“Right,” said Sakura blankly. “Yes.” She was operating on automatic, washing out her cup and popping it upside down to drain. “Well, I’m off. Have a good day, Kakuzu-san, Deidara-kun.”

And then since she couldn’t stay there and think at the same time, she picked up her bag and fled.

 

* * *

 

 

She almost literally ran into Itachi when she was lining up to order a takeaway coffee. Distracted by her own thoughts, she stepped up further than the line had moved and managed to bump into his shoulder.

“You,” she said flatly when he turned to look at the rude person who’d walked into him.

For the first time she didn’t feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer physicality of the man. Some terribly sarcastic corner of Sakura’s mind suggested that this was probably a side-effect of sacrificing a goat with a naked stranger.

“Sakura-san,” he said, soft-voiced and polite as ever. “Are you well?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Actually I’m not.”

She clenched her jaw and stared hard at him. Looking at him, you’d never know he’d been party to a terrible plot by fate to _confine her with lunatics_. Fate, Itachi and apparently Deidara. She’d never stood a chance, she thought grimly.

“At no point,” she said, jabbing him in the chest with her forefinger - it was a solid chest, just enough give to suggest muscle, and she wasn’t thinking about that _at all, not right now, shut up, no_ \- “at no point,” she growled, trying to keep herself on track, “did you mention that any of your friends might make me _sacrifice a goat_.”

He blinked once, slowly. Without looking he caught up her hand and lowered it from where it was trembling with how hard she was poking his sternum. He did not let go. His hands were warmer than hers.

There was a moment of angry tension.

“...Hidan,” he said finally, loosening his grip.

She deflated almost immediately. “Pretty much,” she said. Except her mind flashed straight in on the image of Kakuzu casually wiping blood off his knuckles with a tea towel. “Maybe not just Hidan,” she muttered.

“I did tell you you might not like it there,” he pointed out.

“I know. And I ignored you. And that’s my fault. But Itachi-san? If you had said ‘they’re all maladapted lunatics and you might be required to sacrifice a goat in your pyjamas and your next door neighbour grows drugs,’ I’d probably have paid more attention.”

“...duly noted,” he murmured.

“You’re still holding onto my hand,” she said blankly after a second.

He looked down.

He released her.

Sakura really had to stop speaking before thinking.

“Hey,” said the lady at the register impatiently, “are you ordering a coffee or not?”

“Come on,” Itachi said, sounding oddly stiff. “It seems like I probably owe you a coffee.”

“At _least_ ,” she said threateningly. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long, so she’d better express herself while she was still feeling cranky. Between his gentle manners and his ridiculous good looks, Itachi was almost too attractive be allowed - honestly, Sakura suspected that her ability to withstand actual, verbal conversation with him without looking like an idiot or a freak with a skin disorder was pretty much directly proportional to her anger.

They grabbed their coffees in paper cups to go and moved away from the throng of students in the union building together in silence. Outside the doors they had to run the reeking gauntlet of slouched, smoking teachers and students, none of whom seemed to be capable of throwing their butts away, but then they were free on one of the green lawns in the mild afternoon sun.

“In my defence,” Itachi said after a moment, “I haven’t lived with Hidan before. I didn’t realise he was quite so... overzealous in his religious dedication.”

Sakura flushed darkly, thinking of exactly how much zeal he’d shown. She wanted to bury her face in her knees in sheer mortification.

“Sakura-san?” Itachi had evidently noticed something in her expression. Surely, she thought, he must be used to her lighting up like a stop sign in his presence.

“It’s nothing,” she muttered quickly. And, dammit, she’d been right: the more she calmed down, the more Itachi made her feel fluttery and hypoglycemic.

“Hmm,” he said without much commitment. “If you have problems with Hidan, it’s usually best to ask Kakuzu to fix it, although he’ll probably charge you for the privilege,” he said pensively after a few seconds.

“Yeah, that sort of happened already,” she admitted. Then Sakura explained the morning’s events to Itachi then, rubbing the lid of her cup thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’s all right?”

“Hidan?” Itachi’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “I’m sure he is,” he said, sounding utterly unconcerned.

“I feel like I should be more worried,” she admitted after a second, “but I also feel like he’s kind of a jerk and I don’t care how hurt he gets,” she added bitterly.

“That’s the spirit,” said Itachi, with no inflection at all, and she smiled helplessly.

It was all pretty messed up, she supposed, but sitting there and feeling the radiating heat of Itachi sitting so close, never quite touching - well, it could probably have been worse.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One: Zetsu is weird and hard. Two: I dislike this chapter, which is annoying because I promised myself this would be a story I wouldn't care about so I could just get it out of my idiot system. Three: Yeah, she totally just said it 'could have been worse'. Whatever hits the fan will not be distributed evenly.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This installment: Sakura learns a little about Itachi’s relationship with his brother, takes a remedial sex ed class, inhales chemical irritants and has a job interview.

Aside from being easy on the eyes - so, _so_ easy on the eyes - Itachi was actually not bad company. He was a little too insightful, and Sakura had an annoying suspicion that he was just as smart as she was. That wasn’t an experience she was really used to and she wasn’t quite sure she liked it. But the fact remained that he _was_ clever, and even if he never seemed to smile, sometimes she thought she could detect a softening in his face, something that loosened around his jaw. It was enough.

He was a little bit quiet, however; not unfriendly like his little brother, but - not forthcoming, a little reserved. Aloof, perhaps.

She reflected on this as they sat on the grass outside the student centre. The sunlight was warm but the air was cool, and the grounds weren’t as full as they would have been in the full heat of summer.

“Sasuke never mentioned you,” she said thoughtfully after a while, sipping her coffee. “I mean, not to say that he talks about anything very often, but we’ve known each other for years. Usually a brother is the sort of thing you find out about.”

Itachi looked at her, a little too intently, but his expression didn’t shift. There was a pause so long that Sakura began to feel terribly uncomfortable.

She was on the verge of apologising and waving it away when he finally responded to her implied question. “I have a... difficult relationship with my family,” he said at last. It was a vague and rather diplomatic way to answer the question, and there was nothing in his voice to suggest what 'difficult’ might mean. “My brother is very attached to our father.”

Sakura puzzled through the implications of that comment. “Fugaku-san wasn’t at Sasuke’s graduation,” she said after a second’s silence.

Itachi’s eyes met hers for a second, and then shifted away. “I’m sure he would have been, had he not been working,” he said evenly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I don’t mind.” He shook his head. “I could have refused to answer if I’d wanted to,” he said.

She nodded, but she shifted the conversation away from family and back to classes. Itachi was a law student, and seemed to spend an awful lot of his time studying. Since medicine was also a notoriously burdensome course of study, she got the impression that she was hearing about a slice of her own future when he talked about it.

“We can’t all be art students, I suppose,” she sighed, thinking of how many hours a week she was likely to end up studying by her final year. Deidara seemed to have it a lot easier. Even if he worked hard on his projects, he was at least surrounded by things that were fun and interesting - or so it seemed to her.

“Some art students would probably say that we can’t all be on a scholarship,” Itachi said blandly, cutting his eyes toward her over his coffee.

“How did you even know about that?” she asked incredulously.

He gave her an enigmatic look and did not answer.

Well, that was frustrating. And mysterious. And interesting. It meant he was paying more attention to information about her than she’d thought he was. She bit her lip and felt her face heat.

Their break was over quickly, and both of them had to head to class - him to a lecture on property law, and her rather reluctantly to a class with Kakashi-sensei.

“Given the time you’ve spent with my brother and Uzumaki, I doubt you have a problem with casual violence,” Itachi murmured, “but with Hidan and Kakuzu and Sasori... and Deidara, too, try not to take them too seriously.”

Sakura nodded, thinking that was probably sound counsel. “I’ll do my best, Itachi-san.”

He paused, shouldering his bag, and looked about to say something for a second. Then he straightened his spine, said goodbye, and left.

She wondered what he’d been about to say.

She wondered probably too much.

And probably too long.

And probably _really unrealistically_.

“Idiot,” she muttered to herself. She needed to stop tormenting herself about Itachi, or she was going to drive herself crazy.

Or turn into Ino.

There was probably some overlap between those consequences, if she thought about it.

She attended a very strange class supervised by a yawning Kakashi-sensei. This was supposedly a class where they learned to ‘impart information simply and clearly,’ but it seemed to Sakura like a remedial sex ed class in disguise for those med students who hadn’t received a very good highschool education on the matter.

Kakashi-sensei mostly sat on his desk at the front of their tutorial classroom, looking around at them sleepily, and barely seemed involved in the coursework at all. His long-suffering postgraduate student, Yamato, was waiting in front of the door with his arms crossed, staring intently at Kakshi-sensei.

Sakura had the distinct impression that her teacher wasn’t going to get out of the classroom alive without signing whatever papers were in Yamato-senpai’s hand over there. The prospect didn’t seem to perturb him much.

While initially Sakura thought a class on something they’d all clearly learned in high school was a complete and strange waste of time, she found herself to be the person with the most expertise in the group she was assigned to.

The second time she found herself gingerly explaining the theoretical use of a condom to a classmate, she revised her opinion on the class, awkward and embarrassing as it was.

“It was weird,” she admitted to Deidara rather pensively that evening. She had still not managed to go grocery shopping, so she was heating the kettle to make instant noodles she’d picked up from the corner store. Naruto would have been so proud.

“Mmm?” Deidara mumbled, not really listening as he sifted through some kind of ground up... something.

“It was kind of an eye opener, I guess?” she shrugged, leaning closer to see what it was that was taking up so much of his attention.

“Don’t breathe that in, yeah,” he cautioned vaguely, wrestling with his scales for a second.

Sakura took a wary step back. “What are you doing, anyway? Is that some kind of explosive?”

“Nah. Sasori-senpai gets angry when I mix explosives in the kitchen,” Deidara said, shaking his head.

Sakura tried to imagine Sasori being angry about anything. She struggled. He didn’t seem to have enough feelings to be angry.

“This is feldspar,” he pointed. “It’s not going to kill you, but it’s not good to breathe in. I should probably be wearing gloves,” he added thoughtfully - an idea that he continued to ignore after mentioning it.

“What’s it for?” she asked curiously.

“A glaze, yeah. Lithium carbonate, barium carbonate, silica - and some other stuff - and then cobalt and copper for colour...” he scratched the back of his head, apparently heedless that his fingers were covered in the pale powdered feldspar. “There’s probably another colourant I could use, but it’s an experiment.”

“I had no idea ceramics involved so much chemistry,” said Sakura, a little stunned.

He grinned at her. “What, you thought art students were all just dumb stoners? Not like those clever medical students, hmm?”

“Of course not,” said Sakura defensively. Then she paused, because if she thought in stereotypes they _were_ kind of along those lines. She cleared her throat, ignoring his knowing look. “Actually I have no idea what an art student does.”

Deidara raised one eyebrow, blue eyes flicking in her direction briefly. “Art, yeah.”

“Thank you for that clarification,” she said drily, but not without humour.

“What were you saying, anyway? About - class?” He measured out one last powder and balanced it on his scales, scrunching up his nose for a second before adjusting the amount.

Sakura picked up her sad little bowl of instant ramen, peeling back its cover and testing their readiness. It smelled like artificial flavours and looked uninspiring. With a sigh, she stabbed her fork into the noodles.

“Um, just that... we had this like, remedial sex ed class today,”

“ _Remedial_?” he repeated, blinking up at her. There was laughter in his voice.

She frowned. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said, waving her tiny plastic fork at him, “I think it was probably for, you know, the people who went to crazy religious high schools or something? I got stuck in this group with two girls who didn’t even understand the physical mechanics of -” she looked sideways at him. Maybe that was a little inappropriate. “Well, anyway. I was just surprised, it was like suddenly I was the most knowledgeable person or something.”

Deidara’s eyes lifted from his powders and colourants, wide and glittering. “Really, Sakura-san?” he asked innocently. “And are you so very knowledgeable on the topic?” He fluttered his eyelashes.

“Ugh!” She threw her fork at him. “Not like that!” she yelled, face suddenly flaming.

He caught the little plastic thing out of the air, surprisingly deft. “Hey, hey! No food in the chemicals, yeah. You’ll ruin the glaze.”

She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, ramen forgotten. She looked away from him.

“Sakura-san,” he said, leaning closer to her. He was almost her height, and eye contact was kind of hard to avoid. She sniffed and ignored him.

He poked her with the fork. “Sakura-saaaan,” he drawled, poking gently but incessantly.

She finally turned back to him, if only to snatch her fork back. It had powdery finger prints on it.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d be more worried about food in the chemicals than chemicals in the food,” she sighed, throwing it away and going to fetch a metal fork from the drawer. “And yet.”

“A lot of the stuff I use is toxic,” he shrugged. “We’re all going to die - but I’m going to die young and beautiful,” he shook his hair back from his face, smiling like the thought pleased him.

Sakura wasn’t sure what to say to that, but it turned out not to matter because Sasori shuffled into the room, blank-faced and ignoring both of them, and he captured her attention.

This evening he was dressed in a grease-stained tank top and horribly stained jeans with the knees missing, and smelled a lot like hot metal. He discovered the kettle was still quite hot, grunted agreeably, and made himself a cup of instant coffee so thick it looked like sludge.

His expression didn’t change when he noticed Deidara at the table. “If that blows up...” he said in a deceptively bland voice.

“Hai, hai, Sasori-senpai,” Deidara waved him off. “It’s just a new glaze.”

Sasori peered more closely at the ingredients. “A new shade of blue,” he identified after a second, much to Sakura’s surprise. From the powdered ingredients, it was pretty hard to tell what colour it would turn out. “Why bother?” he asked flatly. “You’re only going to blow it up.”

“And when I do,” said Deidara in a sharp voice, “it will be beautiful.”

Sasori remained unmoved. “Idiocy,” he said, looking cynical. Cynical seemed to be one of the few expressions Sasori was actually capable of.

“Art,” Deidara corrected loftily.

Sasori snorted. He took a deep gulp of his coffee. From the faint traces of disgust on his face, Sakura suspected it tasted terrible. He opened his mouth, eyed Deidara, and closed it again. “Who’s buying dinner this week?” he asked instead.

“Hidan,” said Deidara.

“Buying dinner?” Sakura echoed, puzzled.

Sasori glanced at her like he’d just realised she was a person instead of a talkative kind of furniture in the room. “On Monday nights somebody buys dinner and we eat together.”

She felt her eyebrows rise. “Really?” Of them all, basically only Deidara seemed like the sort of person who enjoyed other people’s company - and even then, he was probably happy enough to be left alone, too.

“It’s so Kakuzu can yell at whoever hasn’t paid his part of the bills, yeah,” Deidara said, mixing some kind of liquid into his bucket and pulling a discoloured, filthy-looking balloon whisk out from somewhere to mix it all.

 _That_ made more sense. Sakura nodded. “I guess I’ll end up on the roster for that, too, huh?”

“You will,” said Sasori.

“Can you cook?” Deidara asked curiously.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, nothing fancy. But I can cook well enough to get by. I like making sweet things best, though,” she admitted, smiling a little.

“We,” declared Deidara, suddenly smiling widely at her - widely and a little wickedly, like all his best smiles - slinging one dusty arm over her shoulder and drawing her into a too-tight, one-armed hug, “are going to get along just fine, Sakura-san.”

Sakura could smell chemicals and sweat and something soapy on his skin and shampoo in his hair - and some terrible, life-ruiningly good, masculine smell that was underneath all of that. Pressed up against her side he was all hard planes and lean muscle and terribly, terribly warm.

“I didn’t say I’d make any for _you_ ,” she pointed out, squirming away.

“That’s cold, Sakura-san,” he said, shooting her one wounded look before letting her go easily and returning his attention to his glaze like she wasn’t blushing madly.

Sasori examined them with critical eyes, like the meaning of their interaction puzzled or disturbed him. Then he picked up his mug and left the kitchen without so much as a word.

Sasori did not seem to have a lot of social skills, either.

She wondered how this house sharing arrangement would turn out in the long term, sighed, and settled in to finish her noodles.

 

* * *

 

 

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 9:05 PM  
Message body: Any news on Flute Girl?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 7:12 AM  
Message body: Poor thing’s lost her flute. I have it on good authority that somebody will steal that hideous purple thing next.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 7:13 AM  
Message body: And burn it.>

 

* * *

 

 

Finding a job was, at the very least, less of a trial than finding a house. Her endless emails and phone calls and begging people she half-knew to keep an eye out for viable positions eventually landed her with a couple of interviews, one of which was scheduled for Friday morning, just after nine.

On Friday morning, Sakura was woken by somebody rapping urgently on the glass. _Outside her second floor window._

She rolled over, noticing that the sun had barely risen, and...

...and even in the predawn half-light, she would recognise that bowl cut. “What the _hell_?” she snapped, stumbling out of her sleeping bag to heave open the door.

“Sakura-san!” Lee yelled, beaming at her from only a few inches away. His teeth gleamed and his eyebrows were very, uh, there.

Just past him, Gai-sensei was crouched on the railing of her balcony. Tenten was perched next to him, smiling enigmatically and kicking her legs.

“No,” said Sakura flatly. “Whatever you want, _no_. I have a job interview in -” dammit “- in _four hours_ , oh my god, it’s five am! No!” And then she tried to close her balcony door in his face.

Looking sincerely apologetic, Lee wormed himself inside before she could shut it fully. “Excuse me, Sakura-san,” he said, leaving the door wide open for everybody else.

Gai-sensei took the opportunity to stride inside, where it was much too early for the reflection bouncing off his hair and teeth. “We thought that you made such a good start on your journey through the passions of youth during your stay at the Nekketsu Dojo that we simply had to come here and invite you on our morning run,” he said, beaming at her.

Lee and Gai-sensei bowed and looked extremely serious. “Please come with us!”

Tenten leaned against the doorframe, smiling like she was thrilled to see somebody who _wasn’t_ herself on the receiving end of such treatment.

There was a silence. Sakura stared at them all. “How did you get up to my BALCONY?” she demanded.

Lee’s eyebrows furrowed, which looked sort of like an interpretive dance executed by concerned caterpillars on his face. “We climbed,” he said, as though it was obvious.

Well, obviously. But that didn’t quite answer the question Sakura really wanted to ask, but didn’t know quite how to phrase. She sputtered.

About six minutes later she found herself being escorted through the front door and onto the footpath, where she found Neji waiting and evidently trying to look as though he was unfamiliar with the strange, bespandexed group who’d climbed into her bedroom.

“Hi,” she said flatly, glowering over Lee’s head as he tied her sneakers, into which her feet had been forcefully jammed. He tied them on _tightly_.

“Hello,” said Neji, in a voice that was terribly calm.

And then, worst of all, they made her run.

“You didn’t consider, I don’t know, _texting_?” she said to Tenten when they slipped into a walking interval.

“I considered it,” she shrugged. “But I thought you probably wouldn’t come.”

“So instead you organised an _ambush_?”

“No, of course not,” said Tentent placidly, glancing at her watch and breaking into a trot. She took an iron grip on Sakura’s wrist to persuade her along. “Lee organised the ambush.”

Sakura made a noise a little like a kettle boiling over, but then she was running again and she didn’t have the breath to waste.

Tenten, she was beginning to suspect, was actually just as crazy as the rest of the dojo. She was just a lot more subtle about it.

By the time they returned it was six in the morning, the sky was finally light, and Sakura was covered in sweat. Gai-sensei, Lee and Neji had allowed them to catch up during their cool-down walk, stretching and moving on the spot until Tenten and Sakura managed to get there, so they approached Sakura’s new house as a group.

Kakuzu, with a bag slung over his shoulder, paused between the door and the footpath. Sakura could see his eyes flick from Gai-sensei to Lee to her, then back to Gai-sensei and Lee. And then back to their eyebrows, in particular.

His expression showed nothing.

“Good morning,” said Sakura tiredly, leaning on a fence post. Their fence was in dire need of repainting and the lack of sealant was probably going to land her with some splinters but she did not care. Her legs were jelly. She wanted to die.

“We will leave you to your youthful housemates, Sakura-san!” Gai-sensei yelled, probably waking half the street. “Good luck with your job interview!”

And then he beamed, brightly, and shot a fairly disturbing thumbs-up at Kakuzu. He took Lee with him at a dramatic sprint. Tenten patted Sakura on the shoulder before ambling away, shoulder to shoulder with Neji.

Kakuzu watched after them, face impassive. He turned back to Sakura.

“Please,” panted Sakura, holding up one forestalling hand. “Don’t ask.” She heaved herself away from the supporting fence to return to the interior of the house.

“I hope your job interview goes well,” Kakuzu said, remarkably politely, as she passed him.

She eyed him.

“Your savings won’t last forever,” he elaborated.

“Ah,” she said. At least with Kakuzu, you never had to worry about his motives. They always led back to one place.

He continued on to wherever he was going, and Sakura went and flopped sideways across her sleeping bag - until she realised her sweat was making a disgusting wet patch, at which point she went to shower.

 

* * *

 

 

At a quarter to nine, Sakura checked the GPS on her phone one last time and rounded the corner of a fairly dubious-looking alley. Her job interview was at a cafe, and from its location she sort of assumed it was mostly frequented by university students - the kind who had enough money to buy coffee that actually tasted like coffee, just off campus.

Since it was so close to Senjuu University - although tucked away in a disreputable alley - it could be a good position for Sakura.

She turned another corner, looked up, and found it.

TRIVIA was a cafe in the same way a ‘69 Beetle is technically still a car. It had two rough walls propped against the ancient and crumbling bricks of the neighbouring building, and a rusted sliding door out onto the footpath. The chairs were made of rescued milk crates with bright but mismatched cushions nailed to their tops. It wasn’t precisely clear to Sakura whether or not the pennyfarthing leaning by the door was part of the decor, or if it actually belonged to one of the patrons.

The second Sakura stepped inside her face was attacked by a hanging paper crane. The ceiling was high, and origami animals and flowers hung from fishing wire at all different heights. Despite being odd and mismatched, the clutter was strangely cheerful.

The whole place smelled of coffee grounds. At nine o’clock it was only sparsely populated, mostly with a couple of university staff members and a few haggard-looking students, who were clearly in thesis hell.

Sakura approached the lone staff member standing behind the coffee machine, feeling a little nervous.

The man behind the coffee machine had hair died a bright, burnt orange colour and enough metal in his face to thoroughly confound an MRI machine. The face itself, once you stopped looking at all the distracting metal, was pretty nice too, in a kind of hard-edged, high-cheekboned way. She watched him for a second while he folded take-away containers, watching the movement in his forearms and the deftness of his fingers.

She could see the wisdom of hiring somebody who looked like that at a cafe so close to a university. He was worth a crush or two.

He was also a potential workmate, so she would probably be better off not oogling him too much.

“Excuse me,” she said to him quietly. When he looked up, his eyes were pale and had strange dark bands in the irises, which Sakura wondered about. Perhaps some kind of cosmetic contacts? “Is Konan-san available?”

His strange eyes didn’t leave her, but he tilted his head sideways. a little. “Konan,” he said over his shoulder, raising his voice only a little.

A blue head of hair popped out from some little nook around the corner. “Ah, Sakura-san?” she enquired. “You’re a little early, do you mind waiting a few minutes?”

“Not at all,” Sakura nodded and offered a little bow. She settled herself on a milk crate to wait, watching the barista’s movements as she did.

“You’re here for a job?” he said after a few moments. He didn’t look up, but he obviously knew she was watching him.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Hopefully.”

He nodded. “Here,” he said, and dumped some of the flattened cardboard boxes in front of her. “You might as well be useful while you wait. We’re short-handed.”

He showed her once how to fold all the flaps and tabs into place to make them into takeaway containers, and then left her to it. It took her two minutes to do the first one, but by the time Konan reappeared she was almost as quick as he was.

“Put those aside for the moment,” she said, and Sakura did so, neatly stacking her completed boxes next to the unfinished ones.

Konan wasn’t so much beautiful as expertly put together. She was poised and elegant and constructed expertly, from her dark clothing to her perfectly-dyed hair, to her nails which somehow remained painted and unchipped despite her occupation. She was serene and placid and she looked at Sakura with amber eyes that seemed to see straight through her.

Sakura swallowed.

What followed was one of the strangest job interviews Sakura had ever been party to. Nobody asked her what her previous job had been. There was no question of what her major weaknesses or strengths were. They didn’t even ask her if she had any experience.

Konan asked her a series of questions that seemed completely irrelevant. What was her favourite colour? Did she like animals? How was she liking her studies at Senjuu? What was her favourite book?

Sakura was a bit taken aback.

“Do you have a favourite television show?”

“I don’t think we even have a television,” Sakura said blankly, brows furrowing.

“Hmm. Do you have any hobbies?”

“Sometimes it seems like studying is my hobby,” Sakura admitted. “I recently took up running, though,” she added, since it sounded good and it was basically true.

Konan nodded. “That’s nice. What about creative skills? Are you artistic?"

“I... used to do some flower arranging,” Sakura said slowly, thinking of her middle-school years with Ino in the school’s burgeoning flower-arranging club. It wasn’t a great success. “And handicrafts,” she added. “Although I don’t have a lot of time for that now, it would be nice to do it again...”

Konan‘s lips curved into a very faint smile, which transformed her face from a work of carefully-prepared art into something genuinely breathtaking. There were traces of a very great beauty in there, somewhere. “How do you think this interview is going, Sakura-san?” she asked.

What was she meant to say to that? Oh, no. Sakura bit her bottom lip, but she‘d already been silent too long and she needed to _say something_. “It’s... not what I expected,” she admitted.

“What were you expecting?”

“Oh, well... you know, questions about managing conflict, and what my strengths and weaknesses are and - and if I have a criminal record,” she said. “Things like that,” she finished lamely.

“Do you have a criminal record?” Konan asked seriously.

“No, of course not.”

“Hmm. Pity,” she said, and then went on rapidly. “Well, do you think you could come in for training at six o’clock on Saturday morning?”

“Training? Tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“Yes. Absolutely. Definitely.”

“Excellent. Pein,” she said over her shoulder, looking at the redhead behind the coffee machine, “is there anything else we need to ask Sakura-san?”

“I don’t think so.” He shook his head, and resumed expertly pouring the milk for a latte, which he finished up with a decorative frond on top.

“I think the owner will like you, Sakura-san,” said Konan in her calm, steady way. “Just remember to take anything he says with a grain of salt, and leave the actual running of the business to Pein and I.”

“The owner?” she asked. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, he’s usually in on Saturdays. He’ll be around, so you’ll be able to meet him.” Konan escorted her back to the door, weaving around the dangling origami as she went. “You have my phone number if you need to be in contact before tomorrow. Have a good day, Sakura-san.”

And then Sakura found herself out on the footpath, blinking in the daylight, and not quite sure what had just happened to her.

 

* * *

 

<To: PIG, The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen, U. Sasuke, Tenten   
Timestamp: 9:34 AM  
Message body: Re: job interview. I think I’m employed?>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer is so fried it gives me a new bluescreen error every hour or so. Writing is kind of unreliable. Just so you know.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura heads to her first shift at work, an art student is punched in the face, emergency services are called, there is wholly gratuitous interpersonal licking, Kakashi is a troll and Itachi is a filthy usurper.

Sakura’s first shift at TRIVIA was... eventful.

She arrived punctually at six am to discover Pein unstacking the milk crates and wiping the low tables.

She smiled nervously. “Hi,” she said.

He looked her up and down with his strange eyes, bade her a good morning, and showed her where she could store her belongings.

After that she was quickly set tasks. The cafe was mopped and the surfaces cleaned and disinfected of an evening, so mostly she ended up setting up tables, refilling salt and sugar dispensers and stocking the glass-fronted display cabinet with foods that had kept overnight. Pein counted up the til and did several arcane things to the coffee machine that Sakura did not entirely understand.

Even at just after six on a Saturday morning, there was a trickle of caffeine deprived customers shuffling in and out.

Konan appeared, like magic, at seven and took her through an itemised list of things she needed to do when opening the shop, gave her a contract, and explained how and when things were cleaned, where they kept a number of important items, and how orders were made and received.

“We don’t have a lot of room,” Konan explained. It was true: there was no oven, one stove element, and a number of well-used grills and toasters. “Some of the food gets delivered - the sandwiches and wraps and all of the sweets and pastries, but we make the salads and winter soups ourselves. Orders,” she added, pointing to a list of phone numbers pinned to the wall, “are made through these people.”

Konan, Sakura thought, was probably not a very kind person, but she was patient and calm. She had the knack for explaining things clearly and helpfully, and rarely made Sakura feel uncomfortable.

By the time the trickle of customers turned into a stream, Sakura felt as though she had more or less got a grasp - at least a tenuous sort of grasp - on the rhythm of things at the cafe, which was lucky because that was when the owner strolled in.

“THIS IS A MOMENTOUS OCCASION,” he yelled, white tail of hair whipping wildly behind him. His face was open and friendly and his old-fashioned geta caused a loud clatter when he walked. “Everyone,” he declared to the cafe at large, beaming brightly, “I’m sorry I’ve made you wait so long! The latest edition, Icha Icha Tactics, has been released!”

He whipped out a small, green book and displayed it to all of the people he could coax into reluctant eye-contact.

There was a smattering of applause from people Sakura presumed to be regulars - the ones whose orders had been ready almost before they reached the register.

“Uh,” said Sakura, sidling nervously toward Konan. “Is he... all right?”

“He’s the owner,” she said. She was watching him with a look that was simultaneously cynical and indulgent.

“Oh,” said Sakura. “I didn’t mean to imply anything,” she said in a small voice.

Konan did not respond to that. It was probably just as well. “Jiraiya-san,” she said in her calm, carrying voice, “we have a new employee.”

The man with the trailing white hair spun on his heel to look at Sakura.

Sakura stared back. “It’s nice to meet you, Owner-san,” she said.

He beamed at her.

It all went a bit downhill from there.

“A little flat,” he announced cheerfully, “but not bad. You could be an inspiration, Employee-san,” he said, peering at her closely.

She decided that she had no idea what he was talking about, because the alternative would lead to violence, which would almost certainly get her fired.

“I wouldn’t volunteer,” said Konan softly, turning away to remove somebody’s sandwich from the press and set it on a plate.

“I wasn’t going to,” murmured Sakura, eyeing him warily.

He laughed and introduced himself as Jiraiya, cafe owner and writer extraordinaire. “No surname,” he added airily. “I don’t need one.”

“Like Madonna,” said Pein quietly, causing Sakura to choke on a startled laugh. She hadn’t really thought Pein had a sense of humour, but there it was.

“Like _Musashi_ ,” Jiraiya countered.

Pein and Konan both paused in what they were doing and looked him up and down.

“I see,” murmured Konan, before returning to her task.

“No respect,” sighed Jiraiya. “Anyway,” he said, leaning on the counter, still clutching his book proudly, “there’s a delivery today. Probably around three, but you know how it is.”

“Anywhere between two and five,” sighed Konan. She shared a look with Pein, whose subtle facial expressions flickered quickly. “Very well,” she said after that pause.

Jiraiya nodded. Then he turned back to Sakura. “Are you a student at Senjuu?”

She nodded. “I started studying medicine last week,” she said with a smile.

“AH!” he said, suddenly cheerful again. “You must be one of Tsunade’s new students,” his teeth flashed when he smiled.

“You know Tsunade-sama?” she asked, scooting around the counter to collect dishes from tables as they emptied.

“Tsunade- _sama_?” he laughed, and then launched into the fateful (and terrible) story of how he and her professor had met when he ‘accidentally’ fell over into her cleavage. Sakura was certainly not the only person listening. Jiraiya was a good story teller, which she supposed was a lucky thing for an author.

“...and so you see, my nose is still a little crooked!” he finished, pointing at it when he caught her eye.

“Wow,” said Sakura, pausing in her washing up.

“She’s a violent woman,” he nodded sagely. “Beautiful, though.”

Sakura nodded. “Yeah,” she said, thinking about it for a moment while she crushed one milk carton and tossed it in the recycling, replacing it with a new one from the fridge for Pein to use up, “she is, actually.”

Sakura kept moving, smiling cheerfully as she put muffins in a box for somebody’s office manager, who looked like she was about to have some kind of stress-induced aneurysm.

“Actually,” Jiraiya said thoughtfully, leaning heavily on the counter, “Tsunade is the inspiration for a character in my latest novel.” He tapped the cover.

Sakura glanced at it. It looked a little... dubious. ‘Icha Icha’ was a slang phrase denoting, contextually, all sorts of playful romantic interaction, from heavy flirting to making out. The phrase ‘Icha Icha Tactics’ had seemed to imply some kind of pick up artist’s manual, but if it was a novel... She peered more closely.

The blurb seemed to indicate a shameless mixture of trashy adventure and what might be diplomatically termed erotica. There was a picture of some of the other books in the series on the back cover, and somehow they looked familiar. Maybe Naruto had a copy? No, maybe not.

“I think I’ve seen these before,” she said thoughtfully. Jiraiya beamed.

“That’s not necessarily something I’d admit in public, Sakura-san,” murmured Pein, effortlessly decorating the top of somebody’s latte with a butterfly.

“Tell you what,” said Jiraiya loudly, over the top of Pein’s soft, deep voice, “You can have this one.”

Sakura blinked. “I... can?” She wasn’t even sure if she _wanted_ it, to be honest. But free was good. She liked free things. Free things were great.

“Sure,” Jiraiya said, looking a little sly. “It’s an investment on my part,” he added, tapping his nose with one finger.

She frowned, stacking the last of the washed cups and drying her hands. “How so?”

He took the tea-towel off her and put the green-covered book in her dry hands. “Think of it as a gateway drug,” he said, regarding the book fondly.

Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. “Riiight,” she said. Then she examined it. “Well, if it’s really that good I should try to wheedle a signature out of you, shouldn’t I?” she said thoughtfully.

It didn’t take a lot of convincing. Jiraiya seemed absolutely thrilled to have somebody - anybody - ask for his signature, and he wrote a dedication that was illegible but probably very flattering in the front inside cover.

Sakura tucked the book under her coat inside her bag and went back to actually doing work, which was reasonably straightforward once she got into the swing of it. Jiraiya left around twelve thirty, which was when the rush really started to get heavy. Each task was simple, really - the challenge was just to keep up with the stream of people who came in, remember all the things she was meant to be doing, and prioritise so everything got done at the right time. Konan was a great help in that regard, since she had a lot of experience and could direct Sakura at any given moment.

She found it surprisingly enjoyable, although when business began to wind down after lunch time it got a little tedious.

They began packing up at three: machinery cleaned, tables wiped, leftover food put away in the refrigerator if it was good or disposed of if it could no longer be sold (although Sakura was pretty sure Pein was taking a bunch of the stuff they were ‘disposing of’ home with him), cutlery and crockery washed, floors swept then mopped...

“What temperature is the display case?” Konan asked from where she was checking the grounds for tomorrow.

“Um... five degrees?” Sakura said, eyeing the red display.

“Five?” Pein appeared, swift and somehow soundless, right behind Sakura. She jumped a little. He eyed the display with a subtly irritated expression. “I’ll show you how to clean it out,” he sighed, and they spent the next twenty minutes discussing the bits and pieces inside the machine that allowed it to keep the food at a health department-approved temperature.

At about a quarter to four, the place was closed and locked, the money counted up, books double-checked, crates on the tables and most of the lights turned out.

“Leave it,” sighed Konan, glancing at the clock. “I’ll wait for the delivery.”

Pein shook his head. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” he said quietly.

Sakura hovered uncertainly.

“You can leave if you want to, Sakura-san,” Konan said with a faint smile. “I think you’ll do well here.”

Sakura bobbed her head in a quick, slightly nervous bow, and smiled at Konan. And Pein, even, although she still thought he was kind of quiet and weird and just a tiny bit intimidating. “Thank you. It was more fun than I thought,” she said, pulling on her coat and grabbing her bag from where she’d tucked it away.

“You’ll revise that opinion before the end of the week, I’m sure,” murmured Konan. “You said you were available on Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday and Friday mornings and all day on the weekends, yes?”

Sakura nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“We’re closed tomorrow, so you can come in at Tuesday at ten past three. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t be,” Sakura promised, smiling at the pair.

And then she was free and in the cool afternoon air outside and she felt a little bit relieved at the undeniable security of having some actual income.

 

* * *

 

 

<From: Unknown Number  
Timestamp: 5:32 AM  
Message body: Sakura-san, your jogging companions are at the balcony. They're quite disruptive. - Zetsu>

Sakura eyed her phone.

Who the hell was Zetsu?

She examined it some more. Was it some kind of nickname for one of her housemates? An auto correct mistake?

She scrolled again.

<From: Deidara-kun  
Timestamp: 5:39 AM  
Message body: your friends are really loud, yeah. where the hell are you? >

<From: Unknown Number  
CC: Princess, Tightass McStitchyface, BabyDoll,   
Timestamp: 6:15 AM  
Message body: who the hell are these assholes passed out on the doorstep, seriously? they're not ours, are they?>

<From: Unknown Number  
CC: Hidan, Deidara, Sasori  
Timestamp: 6:17 AM  
Message body: No. Ignore them. Haruno, you should save this number. - Kakuzu>

<From: Unknown Number  
CC: Hidan, Kakuzu, Idiot  
Timestamp: 6:17 AM  
Message body: It is six in the morning on a Saturday. Text me again and they will never find your bodies. -S>

Sakura kind of just looked at her phone for a while, standing at the bus stop. After a brief process of elimination, she saved Sasori, Hidan and Kakuzu to her phone. She used their real names, although it was kind of tempting to list Kakuzu under ‘Tightass McStitchyface’. The chances that he might pick up her phone at some point were just too high.

She still didn’t know who Zetsu was, though.

Or how Lee and Gai-sensei managed to go from making loud noises on her balcony to passed out on their doorstep.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:53 PM  
Message body: Sorry! Job interview paid off. Was at work. Is everyone okay?>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:55 PM  
Message body: Congrats! Gai-sensei and Lee are confused but in one piece. Neji says your neighbour’s crazy???>

Sakura frowned at the screen, only half paying attention when she hailed the bus. The person who lived next door had seemed perfectly polite, if a little weird, when they’d spoken that one night...

She wondered if that was Zetsu.

Not that this would explain how he got her phone number, or how he knew who her jogging companions were. Puzzled, she sent a message back.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:55 PM  
Message body: Neighbour’s been okay with me? I think he’s an insomniac, maybe they woke him and he was angry?>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:56 PM  
Message body: Pretty sure he drugged them and left them on your doorstep.>

Sakura was not quite sure how to respond to that.

Although, given her own experience with her quiet neighbour, it wasn’t wholly out of the question.

After a second, she replied.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 3:59 PM  
Message body: You need to start texting me if you’re going to drag me out of bed to go running.>

Privately she thought that Lee and Gai-sensei should just be glad they weren’t conscious when they’d met Hidan.

The bus ride was short but boring, and Sakura amused herself by messaging Ino instead of thinking about her weird housemates and crazy neighbour and how maybe she should invest in a serious filter, just in case there really was something in the water.

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:05 PM  
Message body: Job: acquired!>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:05 PM  
Message body: Sweet! Any hot coworkers? :D>

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:06 PM  
Message body: 66.7% hot, 33.3% average, so far.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:06 PM  
Message body: Niiice. Pix or it didn’t happen.>

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:09 PM  
Message body: I’ll take a photograph when I know them well enough not to feel like a creeper asking for a picture.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 4:09 PM  
Message body: Hmm. I’ll allow it. For now.>

 

* * *

 

 

Kakuzu was in the kitchen when she got home, nose buried in a copy of the International Trade and Business Law Review while he waited for his coffee to percolate.

“Sorry about this morning,” she said breezily, setting her bag down and digging out the owl-shaped mug she’d appropriated from Deidara. “I didn’t think they’d just show up on my balcony again.” Although she probably _should_ have expected it in hindsight, since they’d done it once.

“They seemed to expect you to be here,” said Kakuzu, glancing at her over the edge of his journal. He had very sharp eyes.

“If they’d contacted me before hand at all,” she said tartly, “I might have been able to let them know otherwise.” She set the kettle to boiling and dug out her little box of tea. She hadn’t brought much with her and she _really_ needed to go grocery shopping. But she’d been busy.

She contemplated going this evening, but she was tired and there was enough instant ramen for a few more nights...

Nah.

“Hey,” she said after a second, over the noise of the electric kettle slowly heating up. “Is Zetsu the guy next door?”

Kakuzu grunted in a generally affirmative kind of way. “He doesn’t like being woken up,” he said.

“Hmm,” said Sakura thoughtfully, but she didn’t ask anything more. Idly, she pulled out her phone and saved his phone number. She may as well; he had hers.

 

* * *

 

 

She probably should have studied on Sunday, but the fact was that Sakura spent it reading Icha Icha Tactics.

She regretted nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

Fear of Tsunade-sama dragged her away from her new favourite novel on Monday morning and saw her heading to class, but there was a break in her day between three thirty and five o’clock, which was when she had the dubious honour of class scheduled with Kakashi-sensei.

<From: Deidara-kun  
Timestamp: 3:23 PM  
Message body: you have a break now right? come visit me in the fine arts centre>

Sakura glanced at her message at half past three when Shizune-sensei finally waved them away. She was half-tempted to text him back and remind him that he actually lived with her and he could not possibly be missing her already.

But she did have a break on Mondays. And she wasn’t that far behind on her studying (there was no med student alive who wasn’t a _little_ behind on their studying, as far as Sakura could tell). She might as well visit Deidara - at least whatever he was doing was bound to be interesting.

Sakura entered the building, which was full of strange sounds, dramatic variations in temperature and smells that almost immediately made her head throb. There was a map on the wall, buried under an overlapping collage of notices for socialist rallies, bake-sales, rooms to let and one much-graffitied religious advertisement.

After a few moments of squinting, Sakura made her way to the top floor, where she begin to question the wisdom of her decision to visit Deidara when all she could hear was angry yelling.

“...think my work is shitty, then your work is _derivative_ shit, because you copy my work and my work was shit to begin with!” one voice snarled.

There was a crash that made Sakura hesitate in the doorway. She could see Deidara’s bag - and shoes, actually - next to the door so she was pretty sure he was in there, but...

“Sketching one of your ugly dolls is hardly copying,” said a second voice, cheerfully bland, and Sakura poked her head inside to get a look at the people arguing.

The room was a huge, sprawling mess. At some point, she was sure, it had been clean and bright, and it still bore traces of its past glory: broad windows, huge skylights, an endless expanse of floor. There were huge, mismatched piles of stained drop cloth left haphazardly on the floors. They evidently hadn’t been used very well because the bits of floor she could see was covered with spatters of paint and glue and other things she didn’t have names for, and it looked as though somebody had sprinkled sand all over pretty much everything below knee-level. There was a huge gouge missing from one wall, filled awkwardly with a smear of cherry-red clay.

In the middle of the room was a grown man dressed in a - a black canvas onesie, it looked like, with cat ears on the hood - and wearing what looked like bright purple war paint. “ _Puppets_ ,” he hissed.

“Are you embarrassed about making dolls?” the second person was - next to that one guy - pretty normal looking. Except that he was wearing a midriff top and a pair of ridiculously tight black pants and what she could have sworn were women’s shoes - dainty boots to mid-calf with open toes. His skin was very white - whiter, even, than her own. He needed more sun. “Is it better if you call them puppets?”

He had possibly the least sincere smile she’d ever seen on another human being. She could hardly blame Unitard Puppet Boy for being so annoyed with him, because just the look on his face made her want to punch him. Her hand twitched instinctively.

With a deep, deep breath for patience, the guy with the cat ears turned to the doorway. He looked her up and down. “Are you lost?”

“I don’t think so,” she said slowly. Her eyes flicked to the thing the pair were arguing about: a wooden puppet that Unitard Puppet Boy seemed to be painting. It had recaptured his attention, and now he was mixing colours and muttering about sealing the wood and the right shade of purple for the lips. “Is Deidara-kun here?”

All eyes immediately swung to her.

“ _Deidara_?” repeated the man in the weird suit.

“She said ‘Deidara-kun’,” said the other one, dark eyes narrowing on Sakura with a slightly too intent focus. “The honorific ‘kun’ used by a girl usually denotes a significant emotional attachment.”

“Wow, Sai. You learn that in one of your books on how to act like a human being instead of a pod person?”

“Yes,” said the man with the midriff shirt - Sai. Odd name. “It was very informative.” He shot his friend another of those terrible smiles.

Sakura clenched her fist.

“You can’t be his girlfriend,” said the other one, narrowing his eyes.

Sakura felt her own eyebrows rise. Not that she specifically _wanted_ to be Deidara’s girlfriend, really, but it annoyed her to have some stranger imply that she _couldn’t_ be. Why? What did they think was wrong with her?

“Excuse me?” she said mildly, giving the pair a fixed smile.

The man with the puppet eyed her smile and then backtracked. “I just mean -”

“You’re far too ugly for him,” said Sai, smiling another giant stupid fake smile at her.

Sakura punched him almost before she knew her hand had moved.

He probably would have been alright with just that, but the surprising force behind her blow made him stagger backward - just a step. A step was enough, and he tripped over a low stool, wobbled for a second and fell into a desk. The desk overturned with a crash, depositing Sai, the stool, the desk and a nearby easel in a pile on the floor.

This all happened in a cacophony of noise and undignified yelping, which left a great silence in its wake.

The man in the cat ears had retreated with his puppet to the other side of the room, but wariness didn‘t stop him from commenting. “...yeah, I think you’re probably single,” he said pointedly.

One of Sai’s limbs twitched.

Sakura growled.

The crash had drawn some attention, and it was only a few seconds before Deidara’s blond head appeared from around the doorjamb.

His eyebrows rose and he came into the room, almost close enough for their shoulders to brush. He examined the damage. “Did you hit Sai?” he looked at her.

Sakura looked between the slowly-moving pile of limbs and desk and easel and - stuff - and Deidara’s face. “He said I was ugly,” she said defensively, huffing and putting her hands on her hips.

“To be fair,” said Unitard Puppet Boy from his far, far away corner, “he said she was too ugly to date _you_.”

Deidara laughed, loudly and uproariously, until Sakura’s face was glowing with heat. He braced himself on her shoulder to catch his breath, and she didn’t push him away.

She should have known that him getting so close had an ulterior motive, but she was still surprised when he leaned in, close enough for his breath to ruffle her hair. “That’s hot, yeah,” he murmured. It was just low enough for her to hear.

She felt her face get somehow hotter, although she doubted it could get much redder, and shoved him away one-handed, totally failing to hide her smile. “Is that what you’re looking for, Deidara-kun?” she asked sweetly. “A girl who’ll beat you? That’s called masochism, you know.”

Being pushed away didn‘t seem to bother Deidara much, since he grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her closer again. She didn‘t protest very much. “We-ell...” he said slowly.

Then he froze. “Oh, shit,” he said, suddenly wide-eyed, and turned back to the doorway.

“Dei-” Sakura found herself cut off by a panicked yell from one of the rooms down the corridor.

Then there was a strange hiss, followed directly by an almighty noise: the scream of tortured metal, a percussive boom, a clatter and crack of breaking ceramics, the grating sound of breaking glass --

The whole room shuddered. The floor sagged, causing more frightened voices to rise. The far wall cracked and a shower of plaster and metal and -- smoke. Black, acrid-smelling smoke spewed into the room, into the corridors, rolling out thick and foul through the building.

It stung Sakura’s eyes. Her pulse leapt and her breath shook. “What the hell?” she yelped, grabbing Deidara’s arm for stability.

She had no idea what was going on.

“Explosion,” he said in a curiously flat voice.

Okay. Well.

Her hands were sweating.

Well, this was all... quite... bad.

“Calm down,” she muttered. She took a deep, shuddering breath, mostly of smoke. And then: “Right,” she said, scooping up Deidara’s bag in one hand and his shoes in the other. “Evacuation time.” She shoved him with his own shoes, getting him moving toward the stairs. They had to get out of there while they could still see.

An alarm started to blare, followed by a calm voice over advising students to evacuate the building. Some kind of structural integrity had obviously been damaged, because there were bits of the walls cracking and falling down in the corridor. There was a yell and the sound of breaking glass from another room where the glass of a skylight had fallen in.

Sakura felt detached, calm and very unreal. The world looked like the backdrop to a post-apocalyptic video game.

She propelled Deidara toward the stairs. Whatever else was going on, he didn’t seem to be thinking very clearly. His eyes fixed on the mayhem, flickering this way and that, and when she was close enough to see him well through the smoke, she could see his pulse leaping in his throat and the rapid flutter of his eyelids.

Peculiarly, she couldn’t tell if he was panicked or just excited.

Sakura and Deidara managed to get to the ground floor just as the stairwell was really beginning to flood with people. The mass exodus of students reminded Sakura of one of the nicer cirlces of hell: panicked, moving bodies, low visibility, shrieking and bellowing. She caught an elbow in the gut and almost fell over.

She shoved Deidara harder, shoving them both out of the building and into the open air.

It was still smoky, but it was markedly more breathable outside.

They spilled out onto one of the big, recreational lawns, where hundreds of students were now milling. Some of them were on their phones, trying to contact the people they’d had plans with. Others were just watching the building.

It was worth a stare or two.

Several of the windows appeared to have been blown out on the top floor, and thick, black smoke was pouring out. More than that, however, whatever reaction had occurred in there had taken parts of the outer wall with it.

“I didn’t even get to see it,” complained Deidara softly, although he looked kind of... not unhappy, examining the smoke. His face was blackened, though, and his clothing would be a write-off. Sakura glanced down at her own skin, which was in a similar state.

Fantastic.

She handed Deidara’s shoes to him silently, still eyeing the building. For all that he’d casually spoken about explosives, she hadn’t thought...

“It wasn’t actually meant to go off yet,” he muttered, sounding a little more appropriate in his sourness. “I’d planned it for on the roof, after dark...”

There were people showing up, fire wardens and campus security, and a voice over recommending evacuation for all buildings connected to the art centre.

“Put your shoes on,” she said neutrally.

Deidara glanced down at his feet. Gingerly, he lifted one and pulled a shard of glass from the bottom.

Sakura winced. “Let me see that,” she said, gesturing. “I have a first aid certificate,” she added when he hesitated.

“It’ll keep,” he said, tugging his shoes on without even flinching.

“It’ll put you in hospital with an infection if you forget to clean it,” she said, glancing at the shard he’d discarded. It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough. It had to hurt. It was definitely narrow and deep enough to be a problem if he did let it get infected.

“It would have been so beautiful, yeah...” he said dazedly, still staring at the smoke. There was a gleam in his blue eyes that made Sakura suspect he didn’t mind this view that much, either.

He opened his mouth to talk again. Sakura put her hand over it. His eyes darted to hers. “Don’t talk about it just yet,” she said quietly. “Wait until you get home. If anybody asks where you were, you were talking to me, got it?”

He blinked once, slowly, like the idea that blowing up part of his university was an indictable offence hadn’t even occurred to him. His lips parted against the palm of her hand. His breath was hot, faintly humid. She pulled her hand away quickly.

“Yeah,” he agreed after a moment. “Okay.”

A woman in a brightly-coloured vest appeared more or less out of nowhere, carting a first aid kit. Sakura was surprised when she recognised her. It was Shizune.

She checked their breathing, made them wash their eyes out with some clear solution, checked their pupils and questioned them about any other injuries they might have sustained. Deidara avoided mentioning his sliced foot, so Sakura reluctantly followed his lead.

“Okay,” Shizune said, sighing, “you can leave. If you have any symptoms like dizziness, difficulty breathing or throwing up, you need to seek medical advice, do you understand?”

They both nodded dutifully, and then she was off again, striding to the next person in the milling crows of displaced art students.

Deidara was distracted, staring at the smoke again. “It didn’t work out how I wanted it to, anyway...”

Against her better judgement, Sakura put her hand back over his mouth. “No more,” she said urgently, eyes flicking toward a few of the security officers, who were going through the students and asking questions.

Deidara nodded, but she didn’t trust him. Maybe it was the shock of the explosion, but he didn’t seem to be thinking quite clearly. He was obviously fascinated by the wreck of the building, but rational thought seemed pretty distant.

She didn’t move her hand from over his mouth. “Yes?” she prompted cautiously.

His eyes finally moved from the building to her face, locking with her gaze. She could see him taking in her sooty skin, the nervous sweat plastering her hair to her neck, the ugly saline tracks down her cheeks from washing her eyes out.

The sensible thing would have been to step back, or move his head away, or tug her hand down with one of his. He did grab her wrist in a clay-and-smoke stained hand, but it was only to keep it in place while he dragged his tongue over her palm and up her fingers.

Deidara’s dazed eyes lit up beneath a spill of soot-stained hair. The look he gave her was challenging.

Sakura swallowed, and kind of wished she’d blushed. Or that she wanted to hit him. Or really for any less awkward response than the one she had.

But there were an awful lot of nerves in her hands, and she could feel every slow, slick millimetre of the path his tongue drew, and _yes_ her heart was racing and _yes_ her blood was definitely moving fast - but it certainly wasn’t going to her head. Things low in her stomach tightened. Anxiety and anticipation curled up and purred under her skin.

All the adrenalin and stress from the explosion was suddenly a very different kind of tension, and it didn’t even matter that they were in the middle of the lawns and surrounded by other students.

Deidara stared at her with his wildly dilated pupils, face messy and streaked with sweat and smoke and flushed with excitement.

“It’s exciting, though, yeah?” he said. His voice was a little lower than she’d been expecting.

She thought he was still talking about the explosion, but she couldn’t be sure.

He bit the tip of her finger, carefully, deliberately. His teeth scraped.

Her lips parted involuntarily.

She wanted, so very badly, to tangle her hands in his hair and force him to hold still while she kissed him. She wanted to smell his sweat and taste his skin and figure out how to claw her way inside him. She wanted to _touch_.

A tiny, hungry noise escaped her mouth.

Deidara smiled against the palm of her hand. His grip on her wrist loosened. He didn’t need it. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“Maa, Student-san, do you really think that the middle of an evacuation is the right time for that sort of behaviour?” Kakashi-sensei’s head suddenly loomed up in the space between them.

Sakura leapt back and shrieked, yanking her hand away from Deidara and breaking the connection.

“There won’t be any more classes today,” Kakashi-sensei went on as though he was discussing the weather.

Sakura dug her nails into her too-sensitive palm. She could still feel where he’d scraped his teeth across the pads of her fingertips. She kind of wanted him to do that to about ninety per cent of her body.

Deidara looked at her with the knowledge of that in his face, with something dark and victorious and smug behind his pretty eyes. She wasn’t sure if she liked that.

With towering self-control, she ignored Deidara’s gaze and turned to Kakashi-sensei. “The medicine buildings’re across the other side of campus,” she said, eyeing him.

“Maa... well, we wouldn’t want to put students in danger. Professional ethics and all,” he said, waving one hand.

“The campus is over two kilometres across!” She snapped. “You can’t just _cancel_ class, you’re meant to -”

She was cut off by a familiar voice. “ _Kakashi-sensei,_ ” came Yamato-senpai’s aggrieved voice from somewhere in the crowd.

Sakura turned to see where he was, spotting his staring gaze in the crowd, but when she turned her gaze back to Kakashi, he was... not there.

“He went that way,” said Deidara, pointing. Yamato-senpai nodded and hastened in the direction he indicated.

“Bastard,” Sakura muttered, with feeling.

“Well, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to get anything done this afternoon, yeah,” said Deidara casually, glancing at the smoking building. Whatever mood there had been was clearly over. Sakura was disappointed and relieved in roughly equal measure.

She really didn’t understand Deidara. She wanted to jump him, but she sure didn’t get him.

He was smiling at her, all rational and innocent again. And if his eyes flickered toward the smoking building more often than they should, well, who could blame him? “Are you going home? I can give you a --”

“No,” she cut in. “No, Deidara-kun,” she said, apologetically but sincerely. And firmly. “You may definitely _not_ give me a lift.”

He shot her a wounded look.

“No,” she repeated.

“Didn’t you still need to pick up actual groceries?” he asked, tilting his head. He touched his lip with his index finger in an exaggerated ‘thinking’ pose - but that wasn’t what the gesture made her imagine. Sakura eyed that finger. She was a little jealous of it. “Do you really want to carry all that home with you? The back seat of the car’s empty...” he grinned, trailing off temptingly.

No, she _didn’t_ fancy catching the bus with her groceries. No she didn’t want to walk the one and a half kilometers from the bus stop with bags, probably filled with heavy things like canned goods. She eyed him.

He looked so innocent.

Her resolve weakened.

He seemed to sense victory, because his smile gentled playfully and he said, “If you get really scared you can hide your face in my shoulder, yeah. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

“Great, because that won’t hamper your steering at all,” she said sarcastically. But she was thinking about it. Damn her, but she was thinking about it.

“Come on, Sakura-san,” he said brightly, “you didn’t get hurt last time, did you?”

Well, no, not technically. “I...”

For the second time that day, she was surprised by an unexpected appearance. A hand shot out over her shoulder, dangling a set of keys, which jangled gently.

She squeaked.

It was a nice hand: clean nails, elegant fingers. She followed it back to where Uchiha Itachi was standing, almost tall enough to put his chin on top of her head.

“I’ll give you a lift,” he said, eyeing Deidara over her shoulder.

“Itachi,” Deidara rolled his eyes, “I _live_ with her, yeah. I’m pretty sure it’d be more convenient if I took her home.”

“I’m sure it would,” Itachi agreed mildly, “but I have a license.”

Deidara pouted. “My driving is fine,” he said. “My driving is _beautiful_.”

“Your driving is unpredictable,” corrected Itachi, raising tact and diplomacy to an art form. He glanced down at Sakura. “The law building is attached to the same filtration system as the art centre, so I don’t have anything else to do today. It wouldn’t be any trouble to pick up some groceries with you and take them back to your place. I need to talk to Sasori-san anyway.”

Sakura glanced at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Okay,” she said, smiling a little.

“Hey!” Deidara squawked.

Sakura felt kind of bad for abandoning him, but Itachi hooked his arm around her shoulders with astonishing familiarity and drew her close as they turned away, and she was pretty much okay with anything just as long as she got to feel the warmth his body gave off right the hell next to her.

That made her feel even worse, because not five minutes ago she’d been letting Deidara nibble her fingertips and she had wanted to drag him down to the grass and wreck him. With her mouth. And her teeth. And probably her fingernails scraping down his bare skin.

She frowned. Why did the world surround her with such horribly attractive men? She couldn’t be held responsible for the hormones bouncing around in her bloodstream like exotic drugs, doing terrible things to her brain.

Itachi’s arm did feel awfully nice.

She blinked shyly up at him. He had four inches on Deidara, and the difference was quite noticeable. “Did you do that just to annoy Deidara-kun?”

“Mostly to ensure you didn’t die,” he responded.

“Really?”

“Really,” he said gravely.

Her expression was still dubious. “And maybe just a little to annoy Deidara-kun?”

“...maybe,” he agreed, not looking at her.

But there was a tiny hint of a smile playing around his mouth. Sakura ducked her head, hiding her own smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a glorious moment of hair-pulling and a shared meal, Pein and Konan are incredible hipsters and a magician pays Sakura a visit.

The car Itachi showed her to was an older model, painted a colour between grey and white, with no particular adornments. For a young man’s car, it was surprisingly clean. There wasn’t even any take-away containers lingering in the foot wells or _anything_.

“You don’t mind that I’m covered in,” she examined herself, dark-streaked from the smoke, “something?” She didn’t really mind being dirty in public - well, not since it wasn’t her fault, anyway, and she could put anybody who questioned her straight easily - but she thought maybe Itachi’s clean upholstery wouldn’t benefit from close contact with her filthy clothes.

“It’s fine." He opened the door for her. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with that gesture. She didn’t want him to think that she was the sort of girl who couldn’t handle being asked to pull out her own chairs and open her own doors, but if that was a thing he wanted to do...

Maybe she should ask him not to.

Maybe that was stupid.

 _Maybe_ she should just get in the car and stop thinking about it.

Yes, probably.

She put it out of her mind. “If you had a car, why did you end up taking the train back from Sasuke’s graduation?” she asked curiously instead of obsessing about Itachi’s manners.

“I loaned it to my housemate over the break. He went to visit his family. He has a van, but it’s... less reliable, over distances.”

Sakura nodded. “That was kind of you.”

“I didn’t have that far to go,” Itachi pointed out.

Itachi, Sakura was pleased to notice, did not drive like he got his license playing Mario Kart. At no point did she experience gut-wrenching terror or feel as though her heart was trying to escape through her throat.

He did, however, take her to the supermarket.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to,” she said, ignoring that he’d already pulled up.

“I have time,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer either way - but then he climbed out and he was halfway around the car and she had to rip her seat belt off and leap out with completely undue haste because she was afraid he might try to open the passenger side door for her and she wouldn’t know how to respond.

He froze, eyeing her uncertainly. “Sakura-san?” he asked cautiously.

She probably looked like a crazy person, covered in soot and stumbling jerkily from his vehicle. “Itachi-san?” she said back.

They looked at each other for a moment.

Awkwardly, he said, “Groceries?” and she took the comment like the lifeline it was and together they embarked on a grocery shopping adventure.

And, actually, Sakura found that having a cute guy following her around the supermarket changed the experience somewhat.

Firstly, he insisted without comment, simply by scooping it up and ignoring her attempts to take it, on carrying her basket - as though her presence in an explosion had temporarily rendered her incapable of taking the weight of her own produce and she must be prevented from doing anything remotely strenuous until some specific time period had elapsed. Secondly, she found herself wondering how Itachi was judging her when she put her purchases in the basket he was carrying.

So she steadfastly ignored the chocolates and the lollies, avoided the temptation of ice cream and tried not to eye up the weight loss supplements in the health food aisle. Instead she filled her basket with colourful vegetables, lean meats, fruit, eggs, nuts and fish.

What was she even going to do with that much broccoli, she wondered. She didn’t like broccoli. Maybe she could feed it to one of her housemates.

“Wow,” said the lady at the checkout, when she stopped staring at Itachi’s ridiculously handsome face for five seconds to process Sakura’s payment, “you look like you’ve had a rough day.”

“A little,” said Sakura, looking down and examining her sooty clothes.

They made it back to the house without any blaring horns, squealing breaks or panic attacks, but the second Sakura stepped over the threshold, something big and orange flew at her face.

She caught it on reflex. It was an orange. “What...?”

“Eeek!” she yelped, spun around by the force of a body flying past her.

“ITACHI-NII!”

Itachi made an ‘urk’ noise when the body collided with him, but it was a testament to his innate poise and dexterity that he neither dropped her groceries nor went tumbling backwards.

Sakura dithered in the doorway, looking from the orange in her soot-stained fingers to how Itachi was trying to carefully put down her groceries amid a sea of flailing arms and happy noises.

“...Tobi-san?” she said, slowly and cautiously.

“Itachi-nii has come to visit Tobi!” he said, finally releasing Itachi and waving his arms expressively.

Itachi shoved one hand in Tobi’s face and propelled him away, scooping the groceries up gracefully and heading over the threshold.

Sakura looked between Itachi as he headed for the kitchen and Tobi as he stood rubbing his face on the verandah. He looked as sad as a sack of kicked puppies.

She followed Itachi.

“Itachi- _nii_?” Sakura asked, bemused.

“He’s my cousin,” said Itachi quietly.

“Ah,” said Sakura. “Well, I suppose it’s not strange for a cousin to use ‘nii-san’," she said thoughtfully.

“My older cousin,” said Itachi with a hint of dryness creeping into his voice.

“...ah,” Sakura repeated. She considered the matter for a second. They did look a little similar, in a way, although their personalities were so far apart it was hard to fathom how they‘d come from the same family. The idea that Tobi had come from the same family as Sasuke was even harder to comprehend.

“I wouldn’t have picked it,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” said Itachi.

She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not. His face showed nothing. He started putting her groceries _away_ , and that was where she drew the line.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, taking half a pumpkin from his hands. “Go, sit down.”

He gave her a flat look. “Sakura-san, you were in an explosion only an hour ago.”

“I’m dirty, not crippled!” she snapped.

There was a very minute change in expression, a slight tightening around his jaw. Itachi looked uncertain.

She took a deep breath. He was trying to help, she reminded herself, not trying to make her feel like he thought she was an incompetent idiot. “Thank you, Itachi-san,” she said in a level voice, “I appreciate your help. But I’m perfectly capable of putting my own groceries away.”

Uncertain changed to dubious. Their gazes remained locked in a fierce battle of wills. Somewhere a clock was ticking.

“Sakura-chan’s knuckles are bruised!” Tobi’s voice announced from where he was crouched down somewhere next to her knee.

She _shrieked_ and leapt.

Tobi scuttled back.

Itachi, whose expression didn’t even flicker, caught the pumpkin.

There was a silence, and the only sound was the thunderous pounding of Sakura’s heart trying to leap out through her ribcage. “Oh my god,” she said, pushing her hand against her breastbone as though somehow it would stop the imminent escape of her heart, “where the hell did you even come from? What are you doing _on the ground_?”

Tobi looked at her, wide-eyed. “Tobi was right behind Sakura-chan...” he said slowly.

Oh.

“Oh.”

Itachi silently resumed putting her groceries away.

Sakura let him. She sat down at the table and sunk her face into her hands. Hand, actually, because she was still clutching an orange. “Tobi-san,” she sighed. “Is this yours?”

“Ah!” he took it from her.

And bit into it.

Through the skin.

Sakura decided not to comment. Of all the complete weirdos she’d met recently, Tobi was probably one of the weirdest. Also probably the least threatening, she supposed, but definitely the weirdest.

It was probably in response to her shrieking that Kakuzu appeared in the kitchen, glowering around. It was the first time Sakura had seen him dressed in anything that didn’t cover him head to toe. Today his arms were bare all the way to the shoulder, and she could see the heavy scarring criss-crossing his skin. It wasn’t really that ugly, actually. The sutures looked like they’d been done by an absolute butcher, but at least they were evenly spaced and regularly sized. He didn’t seem like the type, or else she might think they were some kind of body art.

His eyes landed on Tobi, merciless and displeased.

“Ngeep,” said Tobi, holding his hands - and his orange - up in an I-mean-you-no-harm gesture. “Kakuzu-san is scary...”

Kakuzu’s gaze swung to Sakura. He paused and took her in. “Were you at school with Deidara today?” he asked, examining her fairly filthy-looking person.

“Yeah,” said Sakura. “Does that mean he’s home already? I want to make sure he patched up his foot.”

“His foot,” said Kakuzu, looking steadily less annoyed and more perplexed. But he did kind of look like being perplexed annoyed him. Hmm.

“He got hurt in the evacuation. Is he here?”

“Yes,” said Kakuzu slowly. “He’s been in the shower for forty minutes.” He glanced over at Itachi. “Itachi-san,” he said by way of greeting.

“Kakuzu-san,” said Itachi in his soft, polite voice.

Sakura glanced over at him. Behind him she could see the glowing insides of the fridge, where the shelf designated hers was filled almost to overflowing in stark contrast to those surrounding it. Deidara’s contained a number of containers illegibly labelled that were definitely not filled with anything edible, and the others were virtually empty, excepting coffee grounds, milk and condiments.

Bleak, thought Sakura. Very bleak.

“What do you people actually _eat_?” she wondered. “I know Deidara can’t cook without setting everything on fire, but surely the rest of you...”

“Goat,” said Kakuzu. “A lot of goat.”

Well.

Well, that stood to reason, Sakura supposed. “Oh.”

He looked defensive. “It’s fresh and cheap.”

“Yes,” Sakura agreed. “I suppose it would be. How do you know there’s no semen in it?” She asked it without thinking, and then of course her words were met with a frozen kind of silence. “Uh, sorry, I -”

Kakuzu turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen.

There was a pause. 

“Sorry,” she repeated, mostly to Itachi, who glanced at her and shrugged.

More silence.

“Tobi is a good cook!” Tobi interjected, smiling brightly. He’d somehow inched closer again, and now he was barely two feet away, sitting on the edge of the kitchen table and kicking his legs.

“He is,” agreed Itachi neutrally.

Tobi beamed like this small compliment from Itachi meant the whole world to him. Sakura softened a little at that expression. Sure, he had some kind of evident mental problem, but he was kind of sweet, for all that.

“That’s why you’re at culinary school, right?” she asked, giving him a tired smile. It wasn’t that late, but she felt exhausted. “Do you like it?”

“Sometimes it’s difficult, and a lot of work... but it’s fun, too,” he said.

There was a thud from upstairs. Sakura raised her eyes to the ceiling, but ignored the sounds of violence in favour of listening to Tobi chatter on cheerfully about what he’d learned recently. He seemed unable to disconnect his mouth from his train of thought, but as far as Sakura could tell, he was extremely excited about a unit he was doing on making sweets.

Itachi set a pot and several cups down on the table. He shooed Tobi off it, but the other man didn’t stop talking and the next several minutes were a blur of Sakura nodding politely while Tobi went obsessively on about how you didn’t need a candy thermometer if you had a bowl of cold water and how to temper chocolate.

Chocolate was more complicated than Sakura had suspected.

“Itachi-nii hasn’t visited Tobi in a long time,” he said suddenly, sounding more cheerful than reproachful. From the corner of her eye, Sakura saw Itachi’s face go carefully blank.

She knew he had some kind of problem with his family, and wondered if maybe she shouldn’t be here for this discussion.

There was a pause, and it became awkward not to acknowledge the sounds of great violence coming from upstairs. What were they even _doing_? Sakura could hear somebody yelp - it actually sounded like that might have been Kakuzu. She wondered if he was okay.

“I’ve been busy,” said Itachi, interrupting her concerned thoughts.

“Tobi thought if he made more sweet things, Itachi-nii might come more often,” he said coaxingly.

Sakura saw her chance to change the subject and seized it. “Ne, Itachi-san, you have a sweet tooth?” she asked, smiling.

His gaze shifted to her.

“Itachi-nii is a dango fiend,” Tobi said to Sakura in a whisper that probably carried to the first floor. “But he’s a terrible cook, so he can’t make them.”

Dango..? Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. “Dango are... not that hard to make,” she said thoughtfully. “I could--”

“Ah! No! You can’t make dango. Itachi-nii will _never_ come to visit if he can visit you instead, Sakura-chan,” he looked so pathetic.

Sakura almost melted. She found herself entertaining thoughts about why on earth Itachi would refuse to visit such a well-meaning, sweet relative. Even if he was a bit odd, it was plain that he valued the approval of ‘Itachi-nii’.

Itachi, on the other hand, looked increasingly disgruntled by the turn of the conversation.

“Cooking is not one of my skills,” he admitted quietly when she looked at him.

“It doesn’t seem to be one of _anybody’s_ skills,” Sakura murmured.

She’d just raised her teacup to her mouth when there was a loud bang then an enraged shriek from deeper in the house, an almighty thumping noise, and then the unmistakable sound of somebody falling - or, perhaps, being pushed - down the stairs.

A pile of fluffy towel, blond hair and pale limbs descended horribly swiftly from the stairs and sprawled across the doorway to the kitchen.

Sakura stopped, teacup forgotten halfway to her mouth.

Deidara stayed still, dripping all over the floor, for a few long moments. Then with an unhappy grunt he hauled himself to his knees and tightened his towel.

“Ah! Deidara-senpai!” Tobi did not seem to care that he’d taken a flying leap down the stairs, only that he was right there and accessible to Tobi.

“What happened?” Sakura wondered, trying her best to keep her eyes on his face. It was something of a losing battle. Because, see, the droplets of water? They rolled downwards. And they drew her gaze. And so her eyes moved downwards, along with the water, over every hot inch of his skin.

Footsteps thundered.

Hidan’s voice was indistinct for a moment, but as he descended the stairs they could all hear what he was complaining about. “Why are you bitching at me! I thought you’d be pissed off, too, you asshole. Doesn’t an hour long fucking shower waste money?”

Kakuzu bellowed something from above.

“Fuck you!” Hidan yelled back.

Deidara lunged at him.

There was, inevitably, a scuffle. Sakura winced when somebody’s head smacked against the floor. It sounded painful.

“Ow, fuck! Stop pulling my hair, what are you, a giant girl?” yelped Hidan.

“FINE,” yelled Deidara back, and punched him in the face.

“Mother _fucker_.” Hidan hooked his leg around one of Deidara’s, sent him sprawling, and then scrambled to his feet just in time to kick the other blond in the ribs.

On the second kick, Deidara caught Hidan’s leg and yanked, sending him careening into a wall. He staggered to his feet with an arm wrapped protectively around his ribcage. His breathing sounded laboured, but that could have been exertion.

“So violent...” murmured Tobi, looking disappointed.

Itachi had an expression on his face like he was reading a newspaper article about the relative efficacy of different paint-drying techniques cross-referenced by altitude.

Sakura took a deep breath and drank the rest of the tea in her cup. She could deal with this. She could absolutely deal with this nonsense.

“So you’re done with the upstairs bathroom, then?” she asked pointedly.

“What?” Hidan jerked away from his new best friend, the wall, and glowered at her. “No, fuck you, I’ve been waiting for an hour,” he snarled.

“Then go take your shower and stop messing around down here!” Sakura snapped.

“...There are two showers,” Sasori reminded them. He’d come out of his own room quietly, and now he was contemplating the damage in the hallway. He had an empty coffee mug in one hand. “Hello, Itachi-san.”

“Sasori-san,” said Itachi. “We were going to discuss your project.”

“Aa,” agreed Sasori. He went about making yet another cup of syrupy thick instant coffee.

Sakura stood up. “Okay, I’m going to clean up--”

Hidan made an angry noise.

“-in the _downstairs_ bathroom, since I still reek like explosion. Then I’m probably going to make dinner. Itachi-san, if you’re still here by then you’re welcome to some.”

“What,” said Deidara. “Why are you making dinner for _him_?”

“What, you’re giving away free food now?” Hidan asked, sounding less angry and more interested all of a sudden.

Sakura slapped her palm across her eyes. “Itachi-san helped me out today,” she said from behind her fingers.

“ _I_ offered to -”

“He didn’t _blow me up_ , Deidara-kun,” she said through gritted teeth.

Hidan started to laugh.

“It was an accident!” Deidara protested.

Hidan laughed harder, sounding rather like a broken hinge. Or a broken person. She still wasn’t sure what his deal was.

Sasori, unperturbed, wove between them carrying his steaming cup of coffee and disappeared back down the corridor.

Itachi thanked her, then excused himself, polite, low-voiced, and followed Sasori.

Sakura eyed Deidara. “I need a shower,” she said flatly. “Afterwards, I’m going to bandage your foot. Then I will make dinner and you can have some if you don’t complain like an idiot.”

Then she went to get her towel. Hidan was saying something - loudly, obnoxiously, when was he _not_  ? - but she ignored it.

 

* * *

 

Dinner was a mess. Sakura took the opportunity to use up all the vegetables she could, resulting in a very nutritious stir fry. It was probably a little boring for Sakura’s taste, but neither Deidara nor Itachi appeared terribly discerning about it.

Deidara ate the same way he did everything, which is to say: with more enthusiasm than diplomacy. He was expansive in his praise of her rather mediocre meal, which was mostly delivered around a mouthful of food.

Itachi ate like he might never get a chance to eat again, but didn’t want to offend her on the off-chance he might be invited back. She’d seen people - Naruto, really - devour whole bowls of food in about thirty seconds, but she’d never seen somebody do it while adhering to relatively conventional table manners.

“You... like vegetables, Itachi-san?” she inquired gently.

Itachi froze. Slowly he looked up from his bowl and over to her.

“...Yes?” he said. It sounded like a question.

“He doesn’t,” said Tobi from where he was settled at one side of the table and watching the rest of them devour the food. He’d declined Sakura’s invitation, which was probably just as well, because she’d made it largely out of obligatory politeness and he could probably cook a lot better anyway. He leaned forward like he was sharing a really terrible secret. “Itachi-nii is a _really_ bad cook, Sakura-chan. He isn’t allowed to use the microwave anymore.”

“The microwave,” Sakura repeated. “How...?”

“It was horrible,” said Tobi, in a voice best described as ‘haunted’.

“Worse than the Great Kitchen Fire of September?” she asked, cutting her eyes toward Deidara.

“It was an _accident_ ,” he said through a mouthful of snow peas.

Sakura fought off the urge to note that it _often_ seemed to be an accident, but that never stopped things from catching fire or exploding.

“It was one _tiny kitchen fire_ , I can’t believe Sasori-senpai even told you about that,” he muttered sourly.

“He didn’t. It was Kakuzu-san.”

“Kakuzu spends a lot of time talking to you,” said Deidara, going from annoyed to curious in less than a second. He peered at her, pausing in the process of demolishing the stir fry.

Sakura thought that was hilariously untrue, since Kakuzu rarely spoke to anybody. He was, in a way, the ideal housemate: quiet, clean, punctual and largely absent. She ignored Deidara’s comment. “Itachi-san, do you want to take the leftovers home with you?”

“Ah...” Itachi paused for a second, his face very blank. “...No, I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Sakura-san.”

Well, it wasn’t like her food was better than anything he could get from a takeaway shop. “Okay,” she shrugged.

He looked at her for a second too long, and then went back to his food.

Later, after Itachi had left (rather reluctantly taking Tobi with him) and Sakura was doing the dishes, Deidara sidled up to her. “You’re cruel, Sakura-san,” he purred. She turned her head to look at him, and he smiled wickedly. “Teasing poor Itachi like that. I thought he was going to cry, yeah.”

She blinked.

His hand ghosted around her waist and his chin settled onto her shoulder for the briefest of moments. “Don’t change,” he said.

And then he went back upstairs.

Sakura looked at her sudsy hands, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

 

* * *

 

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:47 PM  
Message body: So the news says your campus got blown up? Did your forehead get melted off? Do you need me to send you flowers in hospital?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:48 PM  
Message body: I can send them under different names so it looks like you have friends. Family discount. Text me back, forehead. xx>

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:50 PM  
Message body: Hardly. Wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds. Accident in the arts centre. Scary as hell, but mostly I just got really dirty. I think my clothes are a write-off.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:51 PM  
Message body: Shopping trip? :) >

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:55 PM  
Message body: I am sunk in poverty. Give me a few pay cheques, then we’ll talk.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 7:02 PM  
Message body: Boooo. :( >

 

* * *

 

As though he’d been summoned by Deidara’s weird comment earlier, Sakura answered a knock on her bedroom door to find Kakuzu staring balefully at her.

“Ye-es?” she asked. “I thought my bond had gone through?”

“It has,” he said shortly, although this didn’t seem to improve his temper.

“Okay,” she said slowly.

After a second of extremely awkward silence, he said, “Are you planning to move out now?”

“No?” She frowned. Did he _want_ her to leave? Surely she wasn’t that hard to live with? He lived with _Hidan_.

“Are you sure?”

“I... Kakuzu-san, what are you getting at?” she asked with a sigh. She leaned against the doorframe, looking up at him. He was really tall. “Am I causing you some kind of problem?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“Right. So if I’ve paid the bond and the rent, and I’m not causing any problem --?”

Once again, Kakuzu looked like he could defeat whatever was confusing him through sheer force of his irritation. After another moment’s mutual awkward staring, he finally said, “Do I need to beat up Deidara so you’ll stay?”

“What? _No_. Why would you think that?” She asked incredulously.

“I was trying to establish a pattern. Hidan put you in no particular danger to sacrifice an animal and you found that distressing, but you got over it when I beat him up. But Deidara blew up a building with you inside it and you bandaged his toes and gave him free food, ”

“It wasn’t the whole building,” Sakura said, feeling a little defensive. “Why does it matter?” she raised her eyebrows.

“I’m just trying to assess your priorities, since they seem to have little to do with self-preservation,” he said, staring at her intently.

“I guess,” she said slowly. After a moment’s confused, tired thought, she shrugged. “I don’t think Deidara would hurt me on purpose,” she said.

Kakuzu’s eyes flickered briefly, down the corridor, where Deidara’s bedroom door was. All was silent behind it. “Deidara can do more damage by accident than Hidan does on purpose,” he said flatly.

Sakura followed his gaze. She hadn’t really considered that. But, yes, in theory, being blown up by accident was an awful lot more dangerous than being forced to kill a goat.

She looked at him in helpless silence for a few minutes.

“Something to think about,” said Kakuzu with frankly astonishing delicacy, before turning on his heel and disappearing back down the corridor.

Sakura watched him go.

Then she closed her door, threw the bolt, and crawled into her bed. When in doubt, there was always homework to comfort her.

 

* * *

 

When studying couldn’t hold her attention, and sleep seemed like a ludicrously unattainable goal, Sakura sighed, reached over, and closed her fingers around the comfortingly heavy spine of Icha Icha Tactics.

Reading it again wasn’t as exciting as reading it for the first time, but it was still trashy, self-indulgent escapism. She didn’t have to think too hard when she was reading it, and it held her attention in a soft cocoon of smut and adventure.

It was there for her when nobody else was.

Booting up her computer would take too long, so she checked out nearby book retailers on her phone. There were four other books in the series: Icha Icha Paradise, Icha Icha Violence and their quirky spin-offs Icha Icha Pooltime and Icha Icha Strap.

Sakura checked her bank balance.

She probably couldn’t afford all of them all at once. But she _wanted_ them.

Damn. She gnawed her lower lip.

Sakura was starting to understand what Jiraiya had meant when he’d referred to it as a gateway drug.

 

* * *

 

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:36 AM  
Message body: When did I lose control of my entire life?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:45 AM  
Message body: ASDFJKL;>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:45 AM  
Message body: GO TO SLEEP. And try not to get blown up today.>

 

* * *

 

At seven o’clock in the morning, Sakura received an email to her university account advising her that due to ongoing maintenance of various air filtration systems, classes were cancelled across the university campus. By eight thirty, she’d received an email from Tsunade-sama with ‘suggested reading,’ to make up for the missed classes.

She didn’t really think it was a suggestion.

Because of the changes to her schedule, Sakura was able to arrive five minutes early for her shift at TRIVIA, where Pein was haunting the coffee machine in pensive silence and Konan was idly folding a napkin into some tiny origami shape.

The cafe had one person in it, and the rest was sparkling clean.

“Sakura-san,” said Konan, looking up. She did not smile, but it wasn’t like she had a particularly unfriendly expression, either.

“Slow day?” Sakura asked curiously as she came closer.

Konan sighed gently. “It always is when the campus is closed. I’d have called you and told you not to come in, to be honest, but...” she looked a little pained for a second. “Well, we have a delivery arriving at about six-thirty, and neither Pein nor I can stay past six today. I know it’s late notice, but would you mind waiting for it?”

“Yes, sure,” said Sakura. “Since we’re not busy, would you mind running me through how to close up? I think I got most of it on Saturday, but I’d like to go over it if that’s all right?”

Konan nodded. “Leave the till for Pein for now - he can sort that out when he comes in tomorrow morning.” She pressed one last crease and set a tiny origami grasshopper gently atop the a canister of peppermint tea. “Why don’t you tell me what you remember?”

Sakura rattled off the list of tasks that needed to be completed before leaving the cafe with only small interjections from Konan along the way, following which she was reduced to exciting tasks like “stand on that precariously balanced ladder and dust the giant origami rose hanging from the ceiling.”

“Do you want a coffee?” Pein asked from where he was perched on a stool, evidently dying of boredom while he folded endless little cardboard takeaway boxes. “It’s the single greatest perk of working in a cafe. I’d make one for myself, but I’ve had about twelve since six,” he admitted.

Sakura glanced at his trembling hands and decided he probably wasn’t lying. “Sure,” she said with a shrug.

“What do you drink?”

“Oh, just a cappuc--”

“No,” said Konan, whose ears must have been as sharp as a cat’s. “She doesn’t want a cappuccino, she wants a real coffee. Tell her about the new beans.”

“I don’t know anything about coffee beans,” Sakura protested.

Pein eyed her. “You should probably learn,” he said.

Sakura was faced with the sudden thought that ordering a coffee was going to be a lot more difficult than she’d initially suspected.

“There’s a new single origin this week,” he said, waving at the incomprehensible squiggle on the blackboard.

“Uh,” said Sakura, trying to read it.

“It’s Ethiopian, from Sidama.” He gave her solemn eyes. “It has exaggerated fruit tones, a floral aroma and hints of dark chocolate with a lingering aftertaste.”

“Uh,” Sakura repeated. “Sounds great.” She honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Coffee was coffee, wasn’t it? He was looking at her very intently, and she scrambled for something intelligent to say. What would somebody who cared about gourmet coffee beans say? “Is it fair trade?” she hedged.

“All the new ones are,” he said with a smile that said she wasn’t fooling anybody.

“Well.” She flicked her eyes from Konan’s bland-but-smiling-around-the-edges expression to Pein’s faintly raised eyebrows. “Well, that’s okay then.”

“You’ll do fine,” said Konan, patting her on one shoulder.

Pein made Sakura a latte, which had such a perfect rosetta on top that she was almost afraid to destroy it when she mixed her sugar in. Increasingly, she suspected that Pein was actually not nearly as intimidating as he looked, despite how half his face was made of metal.

“That’s really nice,” she said, glancing shyly at him.

“It’s a stupid fad,” he said candidly. “But it sells for some reason. It takes a while to learn, but it’s basically automatic after a while. I think I can probably do the hearts and rosettas in my sleep by now. You’d think people would be more concerned about the coffee.”

“With it’s chocolate aroma and lingering hits of floral something something?” Sakura asked innocently.

“You scoff now,” he said ominously. “Give it time.”

Sakura rolled her eyes and sipped her - admittedly very nice - coffee.

Konan seemed to become increasingly quiet as the time went by. Between about five and five thirty they produced take away coffee for the leaving-work crowd, but it was otherwise silent, and the shop was packed up entirely by six.

“The van will show up out the back. Don’t unpack it - just bring it into the store room and lock up behind you," Konan said, pressing a spare key into Sakura’s hand. She reminded her how to set the alarm, and apologised again for leaving her to receive the delivery on her own.

“Try not to get too distracted,” was her last, rather cryptic, piece of advice.

Getting distracted seemed to be the least of Sakura’s worries, since she spent the next thirty minutes perched on a cushioned milk crate, flicking through social media sites on her phone.

At six thirty there was no sign of the delivery, and Sakura was finally feeling the effects of staying up to all hours just to read more Icha Icha. She yawned.

It was ten past seven by the time somebody finally knocked on the back door, and Sakura shoved her phone away and headed to open it.

In the inconsistent light of a buzzing street lamp there was a van painted with intricate wheels of red and black, no two quite the same. There was something large and misshapen strapped to the top of the vehicle covered in canvas and oilcloth. The windows were heavily tinted.

‘MIRRORED EYES: THE GREAT ILLUSION,’ read the gilded text on the side of the van.

There was nobody in sight, but as she paused on the threshold, wondering about all the flashy painting, a tall figure appeared from around the back of the van.

For a second he was silhouetted by the headlights, and all she could see was broad shoulders, long limbs, slim hips. He had a box braced against one hip and his shoes clicked on the cement. Light glinted from his hair, which was a wild mess that tumbled down to his waist.

As he approached, the street light crossed him, and she saw that he had a face that would not have looked out of place on a classical sculpture: strong jaw, a high and clear brow, killer cheekbones.

“You must be Sakura,” he said, eyeing her. His eyes glinted oddly. She was sure they were dark, but the street light seemed to pick up red highlights.

“Yes,” said Sakura. “And you’re... making a delivery.” She wished she sounded more certain.

He certainly acted like he was making a delivery, what with showing up at the right place with a box under one arm, but she couldn’t fathom what a person like him would be delivering to TRIVIA.

He ignored her implicit question and came closer. Some deep, lizard-brain instinct told Sakura to move - and move _now_ , quickly, before something terrible happened to her - but she found her feet frozen to the spot.

She couldn’t move. Her hands shook.

“I didn’t expect to find you working here,” the man said conversationally, striding past her into the shop. “But I suppose it’s just as well. Store room?”

“Left,” said Sakura in a voice gone strange and breathy. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades.

She told herself not to be stupid. Konan and Pein wouldn’t have left her waiting for somebody dangerous, and everybody knew she was at work. She’d be fine. She straightened her spine and cleared her throat, although it felt like even these small movements were an enormous struggle.

He turned toward her when she moved, paused in the doorway of the store room, eyes curious. He didn’t say anything.

She wasn’t sure what to say either. Which made her feel like an idiot.

She cleared her throat again. “Um, excuse me, but... what is a person like you doing making deliveries to a cafe?”

“Oh?” He murmured. He set his box down with a thump and came back toward her. “And what is a person like me?”

His teeth flashed in what Sakura supposed he might have intended as a smile. She was pretty sure she’d seen smiles like that on Animal Planet.

Her back was against the wall. She didn’t remember moving.

There was definitely something red glinting in his eyes.

“Well, you don’t look like you’re delivering paper cups,” she said, lifting her chin even as she wished she could claw deeper into the wall.

There was a terrible pause where her heart rate tripled and his eyes bored into hers.

Then he laughed. He had a hearty laugh, deep and pleased, and not at all the silky threatening noise she would have expected.

“No,” he said after a pause for breath. “No. But you might be better off not knowing, Haruno Sakura.”

And somehow he knew her full name. Thank god that wasn’t creepy or anything. “I don’t know your name,” she said, inching along the wall, further into the shop and incidentally away from his looming frame.

“Uchiha Madara,” he said, and produced a thin piece of card from nowhere in a fairly impressive display of sleight of hand.

Sakura took it, mostly in the interest of him leaving her alone.

He gave her one last tooth-baring smile, and then disappeared with a wave and a laugh. Metal slid against metal with a grating noise. His painted van took off with a rumble.

Sakura closed and locked the door and sat down with her back against it, where she quietly relearned how to breathe.

She flipped the little card over in her hands. ‘Mirrored Eyes: The Great Illusion,’ said one side, backed by a red design that looked like commas in a circle - or koi, or something, she wasn’t sure. It was very stylised.

The other side read ‘Uchiha Madara: illusionist and magician extraordinaire’, and below this was printed a telephone number and an email address.

She stared at the wall for a while, trying to convince herself that nothing had just gone horribly wrong. He hadn’t even done anything threatening, unless you counted smiling and talking.

He’d shown up, introduced himself, dropped off the package. That was all. Mission successful.

Still. Sakura waited another twenty minutes, until she was sure he was gone, before she left the cafe.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a housemate is injured, sleep is lost, food porn is indulged in by the author, and some misunderstandings lead to a tiny little bit of chaos.

When Sakura returned home - finally, at about nine o’clock - the house was dark and silent. That didn’t indicate much, to be honest. She’d discovered that although Hidan and Deidara were often very noisy, all four of her housemates could be almost completely silent if they wanted to.

They usually didn’t want to.

Whatever. They were adults - in body, at least - and they could take care of themselves. She grabbed some leftovers from her shelf in the fridge, ate them cold while leaning against the sink, took a very hot shower and went to her room to settle down with a textbook and her lecture notes for the evening.

It was nearly midnight when she heard cursing in the corridor, and then a heavy, open-handed thud against her door.

Hidan didn’t sound quite right. Was he drunk? She contemplated pretending she wasn’t in, but her light was on. He’d know, and he’d be pissed off.

Warily, she decided against unlocking her door.

“Yeah?” she called from her sleeping bag on the floor.

“You do first aid shit, right?” his voice still didn’t sound right, but now she pinpointed it as kind of... strained.

She snapped to her feet and strode to open the door. Hidan was leaning gingerly on the wall outside. His face was bruised and swelling on one side, and he was trailing blood down the corridor. His clothes were bloody in enough places that she couldn’t pinpoint the source, so she looked him up and down, searching for the injury itself.

For a second she couldn’t see the injury that was bleeding, because it was hidden under his hand, which was at least applying steady pressure. It was in a weird spot, high on the outside of his leg.

“Wow, you should probably see a real doctor, Hidan-san. There’s an urgent care clinic -”

He scowled. “No. Come on, it’s a fucking scratch. I just can’t reach it right. You can clean it and bandage it, right?”

Sakura let out an annoyed huff. “Tell me you didn’t do that to yourself,” she muttered, eyeing the mess. It was kind of hard to see how serious it really might be, but she suspected he’d be better off at a hospital, or at least a twenty-four hour clinic.

“Does it fucking matter?” he snarled. His voice was strong for a man who was bleeding all over the floor. It was a wonder he’d gotten so far up the stairs. Hidan must have had incredible tolerance for pain.

“Well,” she said, pulling open her door and letting him into her room before turning to fetch her first aid kit, “I might not give you the pain killers if you did it to yourself,” she said drily.

“So if I was fucking crazy, you’d deny medication to me,” he said, sitting heavily on the floor boards and wincing. “Fucking grade-A doctor you’re gonna be.”

Sakura blinked, paused, and then took the kit over to him. If Hidan _did_ have some kind of poorly-managed mood disorder it might explain a few things.

“No,” she said, gentling her tone a little despite how annoying he was, “of course I wouldn’t. although you’d need more than first aid to help that kind of problem, Hidan-san. Is that what --?”

“No,” he said.

She eyed him, wondering if he was telling the truth. If he was hiding - badly - a serious mental illness and a self-harming habit, there was very little she could do about it. Best not to press, then. She didn’t want him thinking he had to avoid getting help for injuries like this. “Okay,” she agreed mildly. “I’m going to cut your pants,”

His mood turned on a dime. “If that’s what gets you off,” he said, fast and practised, raising one eyebrow. Bruised and bleeding as he was, he still had a killer smile. If you liked your men a little wicked.

“Right,” she said blandly, refusing to rise to that bait. “I need you to turn a little.”

The wound went into the meat of his thigh, high up enough that she really hoped he was wearing underwear... not that she hadn’t already seen everything. He was wearing jeans, and the heavy denim was soaked in more than one place. At the bottom edge the blood had slowed and stated to dry, sealing the denim to him in a weird, tacky, congealing mess.

“You have glass in your thigh,” she said, once she’d spotted it. Ow.

“Fuck, I thought I got all that out,” he grumbled.

She hesitated for a second, reaching but not touching. “I’ve got some codeine,” she said. “Do you want it? It might be a good idea to take it now.”

“Nah,” he said, breathing deep. “God holds all suffering sacred. It’s not really okay for me to take that shit.”

She frowned. “That seems... unnecessarily cruel.”

“Yep,” he agreed. He smiled at her. This one was a little more genuine.

She wielded her scissors with a confidence she actually did not feel at all, slicing down the outside seam of his jeans. “Why would you follow a religion like that?” she wondered.

“All religions are fucking cruel,” he declared in a voice gone suddenly strong and scathing. “Mine’s the only one that’s fucking up front about it.” He breathed deeply and carefully as Sakura concentrated on getting the fabric away from where it was partially stuck in his skin. It looked like maybe he’d skidded across something.

“Right,” she muttered. She took the shard of glass out quickly but carefully, and she was quick to apply pressure. The wash of fresh blood might have helped clean the wound, but he’d already bled quite a lot.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to his comment. She knew very little about his religion and wasn’t convinced that it was in her own best interests to learn much more. She washed the whole mess with saline then cleaned it out with an antiseptic that must have stung like all hell.

If Hidan noticed that pain, Sakura couldn’t tell. His breathing was deep and even, his eyes relaxed and distant.

“How did you get this, anyway?” she asked instead.

“Dustup at work,” he said candidly. “There was a mess with some local assholes from some gang. We ended up forty minutes late for fucking everything.”

She supposed she shouldn‘t have been surprised that Hidan had managed to be involved in some shady gang fight - he phrased it to sound as though he’d been innocently doing his job when they’d picked a fight, but she had her doubts. “Huh,” she said, instead of any of the things she was thinking, feeling that she was being very diplomatic. “Sounds scary.”

“Nah,” he disagreed. “Lucky shot knocked me on my arse,” he admitted, pointing to his chin where the swelling was really beginning to set in. “I beat the shit out of them.”

And even if he hadn’t, that’s what he’d be telling her. She nodded easily. “Is there going to be trouble here?”

“Here?” His lips cracked into a broad, deranged smile. A split that had stopped bleeding began again, painting his lower lip red. “Fuck, God willing, yes. But probably not.”

She relaxed a little and nodded. Dressing now, then bandage. The bleeding seemed to be slowing on its own, and Hidan’s breathing was still slow and steady - and he was still talking just as coherently as he usually was. He probably hadn’t lost that much blood, on a grand scale.

Which meant that at least some of the blood wasn’t his. She hoped idly that there were no horrific blood-borne diseases involved. She doubted she’d be able to get him to go to a hospital.

He cracked a huge yawn. “Are you gonna put some furniture in here at some point?” he asked, scowling at the room. “Seriously, it looks like some hobo squatter moved in. Do you actually sleep on the fucking floor?”

She glanced behind them. Her 'bed’ was currently her sleeping bag and a couple of extra blankets topped with a pillow. It looked a little like a nest, surrounded by her laptop, a table lamp resting on the floor, and her pile of books. A stream of moonlight from the balcony doors crossed it, intersecting oddly with her lamp light.

“Haven’t had the time,” she admitted, although she thought about it every evening when she felt how hard it was under her spine. “But I’ve got furniture in storage. One of my friends said he’d be bringing it up here this week.”

Well, he hadn’t _said_ , exactly, but she’d told him to and he probably would. Naruto was startlingly sweet like that sometimes.

Hidan grunted. “About fucking time, you’ve been here long enough.”

“I guess,” she said, nudging his legs apart so she could cut the leg of his jeans away. He spread his legs wider than he had to without complaint, licked his lips, smiled another of those mean, knowing little smirks and gave her some serious eye contact.

“Stop sexually harassing me. I will smack you,” she warned.

“Yeah? Kinky,” he purred.

She didn’t look up from his leg when she smacked him on the arm, open-handed, hard enough to sting but not to do any damage.

He laughed, and then winced when his mirth jarred something. “Fucking ow, that hurts,” he said, pressing a hand to his jaw.

“ _That_ hurts?” she asked incredulously, winding a gauze bandage around carefully.

“Face shit always hurts,” he said, blinking sleepily at her. “Your bedside manner’s a lot better than Kakuzu’s, seriously,” he commented, yawning again.

It was contagious. She yawned in response. “Kakuzu-san usually does this sort of thing?”

“Mmm,” Hidan agreed, letting his head fall back against the wall. “If you pay him. Mean fucker,” he added after a second, as though it was some kind of obligatory title.

“Ah,” Sakura said, understanding. Of course. If there was a way to get money out of somebody, Kakuzu would find it. Although it seemed a little callous to charge your housemates for first aid.

But first aid supplies cost money, and neither Hidan nor Deidara had proven very competent at avoiding injury.

She looked up to comment on this, but Hidan was dozing against the wall. “Hey, no, you can’t sleep here,” she said, poking him in the chest.

He swatted half-heartedly at her hand. “Fuck off, I’m sleepy,” he growled. It wasn’t a very threatening growl.

She eyed him. “Your bedroom is just down the corridor, Hidan-san,” she said.

“It’s a fucking long corridor,” he said. “And my room’s cold. I don’t snore or anything. Just stop whining and you won’t even know I’m taking a nap here.”

She heaved a sigh. It wasn’t like she could lift him. “Fine,” she grumbled, and returned to her blanket nest.

 

* * *

 

At two o’clock she woke to a heavy body curling around her, shivering closer under the unzipped edge of her sleeping bag.

She froze, heart pounding. Idiot, she thought. She _knew_ she shouldn’t have let him through her door in the first place. What even possessed her to go to sleep with him in the same room? And now she was trapped and --

“It’s really fucking cold,” Hidan grumbled sleepily. He sounded... plaintive. Whining. Not dangerous.

“Hidan,” she growled, dropping the honorific.

She could almost hear him rolling his eyes. “I’m not gonna try anything,” he said around a yawn. “But it’s cold, and you’re warm.”

“If it’s so goddamn cold, go back to your own bed,” she snarled, flailing and smacking him in the face with one elbow.

“Ow, mother _fucker_ ,” he swore, and grabbed her elbow. He tugged on her sleeping bag. “Don’t be fucking cruel, my leg really hurts.”

He pulled on her elbow, wrapping her arm around his stomach, forcing her into a kind of weird spooning position against his back. His hair smelled like expensive shampoo, but under it was the strange, raw-meat smell of healing injuries and the rusty scent of dried blood. She couldn’t smell anything of Hidan under all that.

Oh, what the hell did it matter? She’d be hard pressed to make him go anywhere he didn’t want to, and it was late. And she had work in the morning. She heaved a giant sigh. “You’re an asshole,” she told him, smacking his stomach with her open palm, since that was where he was keeping her hand anyway. But rude as it was, he comment was a symptom of relenting.

“You’re _warm_ ,” he told her happily.

“I am going back to sleep. If you try anything -” she paused. He was bigger, stronger and crazier than she was. What was she going to say? She’d threaten to threaten?

“Yeah?” he drawled, obviously thinking the same thing.

“I’m pretty sure I can outrun you right now,” she huffed finally, feeling just a little resentful about the whole situation.

She felt his stomach muscles contract against a laugh.

“Don’t fucking flatter yourself,” he told her with a mean smile she could hear. “You should be flattered a someone as fucking hot as me would -”

She threw one of the extra blankets over his head to drown out the noise.

Wednesday morning, Sakura’s alarm went off at five o’clock because she was meant to open with Pein at six. The second thing she heard was a confused, unhappy noise.

“...the fuck is it?” Hidan’s voice was croaky in the morning. He had one long, lean-muscled arm coiled around her hips, but she was pleased to note that their positioning was more or less innocent.

“I’ve got work,” she said, at least as unhappy as he sounded, reaching over to turn the alarm off.

He grunted, burrowing his head under the covers. He was really warm.

...but he still smelled pretty filthy.

She wriggled a little.

“I need to get out,” she said pointedly.

He made a really pathetic growling noise and let her climb over him to the unzipped edge of the sleeping bag and stumble out onto the cold floorboards.

Then he rolled over with a wince and went back to sleep.

She sighed. Well, whatever. It wasn’t like she had anything especially secret in here

She grabbed her clothes and her towel and went to the bathroom to get ready for work.

 

* * *

 

 

“You look tired, Sakura-san,” said Pein when she got in that morning. “I understand that the delivery was late,” he added thoughtfully.

“Not that late,” she shook her head. “But when I got home there was a problem with one of my housemates, so it was a late night anyway.”

He nodded, accepting this rather vague explanation.

Despite his appearance, Sakura found that she rather liked Pein. There was an undeniable placidity about him that nobody else she knew really had. Even Itachi, who was so very collected, had definite sharp edges buried under his serene face.

Nobody had quite as many sharp edges as Hidan, though, she reflected. She pushed that thought away.

Pein pushed a latte toward her, and she took a second to examine the foam, in which there was undeniably the sweeping image of two circling koi.

“Uh, wow,” she said, a little dumbfounded. “I don’t think I could draw that with a pen,” she admitted.

Pein gave her a half-smile and sipped his own coffee. “You looked like you needed it.”

“I do,” she agreed, regretfully destroying the foam art when she stirred in her sugar, “Oh, I do.”

Sakura worked until eleven. It was mostly a breakfast crowd. Thankfully TRIVIA served mostly western food. She couldn’t imagine how tricky it would be to be trying to steam rice, prepare tamagoyaki and broil fish while serving customers. The cafe just didn’t have room for it.

They did well enough as it was, anyway. There were a few people who came in and ordered a bowl of cereal and milk, which puzzled Sakura exceedingly since it wasn’t exactly rocket science to prepare. But there were also croissants with cheese and ham and thinly-sliced tomatoes, or alternatively chocolate or fruit preserves, thick slices of toast with cold cuts or spreads or fruit salads with yoghurt and honey, all of which were simple to prepare in their tiny kitchen area.

It fell into a pattern easily, once they were set up and organised: Pein made coffee after coffee, interrupted only by occasional requests for tea or hot chocolate. He must have had good observational skills and a really excellent memory, because his strange, sharp eyes missed nothing: he knew every regular’s order within three visits, remembered the names of very nearly every repeat customer, and knew just which sweet thing to nudge somebody toward to get them to buy it.

After the fifth hesitant student had come in determined to avoid calorific additions and left, a little bewildered, with a delicious slice of hot buttered banana bread in one hand and a takeaway coffee in the other, Sakura decided she’d better keep an eye on him. He was clearly a triple threat to any diet plan.

“It’s not me,” he said during a brief and very temporary lull while Sakura was doing her best to make a dent in the growing pile of dirty dishes. “Konan makes excellent banana bread.”

“Hmm,” said Sakura, rather dubiously.

Konan _did_ make really excellent baked goods, however. The banana bread, the honey-ginger biscuits made with almond meal... There were also - apparently famously, since Sakura had already been asked for them four times and she’d only been there for three shifts - chopped date and chai spice biscuits that came out only on Thursdays and had a dedicated following of their own.

“She makes five trays,” Pein informed Sakura quietly, watching the latest disappointed cookie-hunter disappear with only a long black and a commercially-produced choc-chip biscuit in hand. “They always sell out before the lunch rush.”

His strange, ringed eyes had a satisfied gleam, like he enjoyed denying the people who came in demanding baked goods to which they were plainly addicted.

“Wow,” said Sakura, feeling her eyebrows rise. “I don’t usually eat a lot of sweets, but maybe I should make an exception...”

Konan also made a kind of fruit bread with thinly sliced dried figs and walnuts, which Sakura happily toasted and served with a smear of salted butter and hot tea. The smell of cooking fruit sugars and espresso was kind of hard to ignore, and made her stomach rumble unhappily. She’d eaten a banana and a latte for breakfast, and it was starting to show.

At eleven, Konan herself appeared, hauling a number of heavy bags with her, and all of the lunch foods had been delivered by disgruntled men and women in vans with boring logos, and Sakura kept her apron on long enough to finish the giant pile of dishes while Konan took over with the register and keeping on top of orders.

The sweet breakfasts foods were all but forgotten, and all Sakura could think about by the time eleven thirty came around and she was supposed to be leaving were those soft sourdough rolls filled with shredded chicken, coriander and flaked almonds, topped with a mayonnaise Konan made from scratch in her own kitchen.

“I’ll go you halves,” Konan said, eyeing exactly the same rolls.

“ _Yes_ ,” said Sakura, completely unashamed of her lust for them.

They had a little lull before the lunch rush, where Konan cut the roll and they leaned on opposite sides of the low counter, devouring hungrily.

“How’d we do this morning?” Konan asked, somehow looking refined and elegant even when she was shoving food in her mouth and speaking aloud.

Sakura idly considered that she’d probably maim somebody for half her boss’s poise.

“Good,” said Pein, nodding a little as he poured a ridiculously cute foam panda onto the top of somebody’s drink. It had big, sad-looking eyes. Sakura watched, wondering how this magic was achieved.

In the bag by her leg, her phone buzzed, informing her that she had messages previously received but not checked. She pulled it out and examined the screen, still picking at her roll.

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 10:15 AM  
Message body: SAKURA-CHAN THERE’S A WEIRD MAN IN YOUR BED.>

Oh, god.

Who had let Naruto into her room? No, she hadn’t locked the door to her room when she left, but...

Oh, _god_.

“Sakura-san?” that was Pein, not Konan. She jumped.

“It’s fine,” she said, and if it came out sounding a little strangled, well --

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 10:16 AM  
Message body: HE’S NT WEARNG PANTS SAKURA-CHAAAAAN WHAT HAPPENED>

Well, no, she supposed, he probably wouldn’t have been. Because she’d cut most of them away, and then they’d just been a mess of bloody denim scraps. She probably would have taken them off, too.

She flipped through her messages.

<From: U. Sasuke  
Timestamp: 10:30 AM  
Message body: We left you for a fortnight, Sakura. One fortnight.>

He’d brought _Sasuke_?

It was the first text she’d received from Sasuke’s phone that might actually have been from Sasuke in about a month.

There was a missed call from Deidara.

Make that three missed calls from Deidara.

And then one from Itachi.

She scrubbed her hands through her hair. “Crap,” she muttered.

Konan glanced over her shoulder. “Looks like you were missed.”

“Apparently,” she muttered, contemplating whether or not she should call any of them back.

A second later, the cafe phone rang. “TRIVIA,” said Konan automatically, picking it up.

There was a long silence.

A tinny voice said, “Konan-san?”

“Aa,” she said, frowning.

The next words were indecipherable. “Yes,” said Konan. She glanced curiously at Sakura. “She’s fine?” her voice turned up in a question at the end.

More talking from the other line. “Mmm,” said Konan. She was still looking straight at Sakura. “I see. She’s working. No, she’s working. No. If she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid,” she went on implacably.

After she’d hung up, Konan blinked at her for a second. “Sakura-san...” she said slowly. “Are you Akasuna Sasori’s new housemate? The one who’s a friend of Itachi-san?”

Sakura looked up from her phone. “You ...know Sasori-san?” She hadn’t been aware that Sasori had enough experience talking to other human beings to make friends. “You know Itachi?”

They looked at each other for a second.

“And Kakuzu and Hidan?” Konan said in that same slow voice.

“And Deidara,” said Sakura. “You know all of them?”

Pein made a noise, something between the sound an unhappy cat makes and a snort of laughter. It wasn’t very flattering.

“How convenient,” murmured Konan.

Sakura wasn’t entirely sure why that might be convenient, but she nodded slowly.

“He... Was he calling for me?” She had no idea what Sasori would be calling her for, since she’d spoken about twenty sentences to him and most of them he’d answered with a grunt or some kind of rude non-sequitur.

Konan’s eyebrows rose. “Sasori called to say that your friends are very noisy, and Hidan is screaming, and Deidara set something on fire, and could you come home immediately and make them all be quiet so he could concentrate.”

“Oh, _god_ ,” Sakura moaned, sinking her head into her hands. Her delicious roll was forgotten in favour of a sense of terrible impending trauma.

“I told him you had to stay at work,” she offered with a sympathetic half-smile.

“Thank you,” she exhaled. “Do you think if I just hide in the university library for the next six hours they’ll all go away?”

“Only when they have to visit the ED,” Pein predicted serenely.

He was probably right. Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she contemplated not even looking at it.

Reluctantly, she glanced at the caller.

Kakuzu.

Huh. She flicked 'answer’ and brought it to her ear, heading into the quieter part of the cafe. “Kakuzu-san,” she said.

“What the hell happened last night,” he said. It should have been a question, but it sure didn’t _sound_ like a question. “There’s some little blond shit shrieking about Hidan violating your innocence. Deidara and Hidan are...” there was a thump and a distinctly agonised scream in the background, “having a disagreement.”

Kakuzu sounded... tired.

She probably did owe him an explanation - given that he was the poor bastard who got to walk in on the mess.

“Hidan-san was injured,” she said, contemplating how she should explain. In the split-second between one breath and the next, Sakura decided to pretend she was absolutely oblivious to the implications of letting a strange man sleep in her bed with her. “I bandaged the injury, but he refused medication and he didn’t want to go to the hospital, so I let him sleep in my room for the night so I could keep an eye on him. Then I had to go to work. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“You let Hidan sleep in your room,” Kakuzu said slowly.

In the background there was another enraged bellow, voice indecipherable, which may or may not have been in response to Kakuzu’s words.

“Uh, yeah. He was hurt. I was worried.”

“You were worried,” he repeated.

“...yes,” she agreed, wondering what the problem was.

There was a short pause, and then another noise in the background.

“ _Put down the knife_ ,” she heard Sasori growl in a voice that made the hairs on her arms stand up.

There was a clatter and a crash.

Kakuzu grunted. It wasn’t a happy sound.

“Aw, Sasuke-chan’s nose is bleeding,” said a very loud, much-too-cheerful voice right near the phone.

“Is that Tobi?” Sakura asked incredulously.

“Hello, Sakura-chaaan!” he yelled into the phone, and probably incidentally into Kakuzu’s ear.

The next thud sounded remarkably close by, and sounded a lot like Tobi’s head meeting the wall.

Kakuzu was probably the sanest of them all, she thought, feeling very sympathetic toward him all of a sudden.

“Come down to TRIVIA,” Sakura suggested, now armed with the knowledge that Kakuzu would know exactly where that was. “Let them sort themselves out. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

“Lunch,” Kakuzu said in a dire voice. “This is worth at _least_ lunch.”

“Fine, I’ll buy you lunch,” she rolled her eyes. “Just get out of there.”

“Fine,” he grumped, and then the call cut out.

Sakura leaned back against the edge of the counter and closed her eyes, exhaling deeply. It felt like the beginning of a really, really long day.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura has lunch with Kakuzu, there is a brief interlude with the glorious Icha Icha, somebody gets stabbed and Sakura still has to get Naruto to leave her goddamned house.

That was how Sakura ended up sitting in a back corner of TRIVIA, watching silently with her hand propped on her chin as Kakuzu devoured his lunch - a crusty sourdough roll filled with avocado, tomato, thin slices of a soft white brie and a generous cut of some kind of cured meat.

He ate it like it had been a while since he’d had a good meal, which was interesting, because if Sakura could afford to buy groceries he certainly could too. Perhaps he was another one who couldn’t cook.

Sakura watched and decided against commenting.

There was silence.

Silence and, like, chewing-om-nom-nom noises.

Kakuzu didn’t seem to grow uncomfortable with Sakura’s eyes on him, so she kept watching. She figured he was probably used to it - with the scars on his face, half the shop took a second glance before they shifted away from him.

They stretched oddly when he ate, but they weren’t that bad, once you got used to them. She’d seen much worse scars, both in her textbooks and day to day. They could have been keloid scars that built up and spread well past the original wound, or maybe bad burn scars where the skin had melted and flowed.

With the kind of week she’d had, it began as a subtle annoyance but quickly grew until she was itching with the urge to turn around and yell at random customers whose gaze lingered a little too long. It was hypocritical, of course - she’d done it when she first saw Kakuzu’s face, too.

“You work at TRIVIA,” Kakuzu said, breaking her out of her cranky thoughts.

No shit, she thought crankily.

“Yep,” she agreed, dragging her glower away from a lady ordering a short black and back to his face. “Nearly a week now.” Or, it would be, provided she managed to survive the week. Between creepy magicians, exploding buildings, crazy people crawling into her sleeping bag...

He was looking at her like she’d finally done something interesting and he had no way to classify it. After a second in which he shoved another bite of his lunch into his mouth, he spoke again. “A week. And you like it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t dislike it. Pein-san and Konan-san are good, the work keeps me on my feet and the hours are flexible.”

He eyed her for another few long seconds. Then he grunted and went back to his food.

She had no idea what that was meant to indicate, other than his total lack of social skills.

Her phone buzzed. Again. It was resting on the wooden tabletop, next to her right hand. She eyed it warily, but didn’t flip it over to see who’d texted her.

A few seconds later it buzzed again.

“Are you going to get that?” Kakuzu asked. He sounded annoyed.

She looked from the phone to him and back. Then she sighed. “Yeah.”

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 12:17 PM  
Message body: Are you okay? Apparently there’s an axe-murderer in your bedroom?>

Sakura stared at her phone for a second.

“What...” she mumbled. “How?”

Kakuzu watched her over his plate with a blank expression and eyes that missed nothing.

The phone buzzed again.

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 12:18 PM  
Message body: Hinata says Kiba says you’re living with a bunch of psychopaths? More importantly you’re living with a bunch of GUYS? FOREHEAD WHY WAS I THE LAST TO HEAR ABOUT THIS?>

Sakura looked at her phone for a few long moments.

“You know what?" she muttered to Kakuzu. “Nope. Just nope." Then she turned it off. She pushed back her chair and stood. “I’m going to the campus library. If I don’t come back, _don’t_ send a search party.”

“Campus is closed,” Kakuzu reminded her.

“Good,” she said, a little impatiently. “It’ll be empty.”

He snorted softly, but didn’t stop her.

She paid Konan for Kakuzu’s lunch and headed out into the chilly streets.

Senjuu University had the advantage of being extremely close by. Maybe heading into the university when they were repairing structural damage wasn’t Sakura’s most sensible idea, but the sciences library was across the other side of the campus from the arts centre, so she figured it was pretty safe.

The automatic doors opened, suggesting to Sakura that there were probably some staff hanging around the campus today. No students, though, which made the place look a little disturbing in its emptiness.

Also, she’d been right. It was completely silent inside the library.

She’d had grand plans of pulling out some useful text books and taking notes, but she was tired and pissed off and she just didn’t have it in her to concentrate that much.

Instead she curled into one of the seats at a study table and whipped out her increasingly-worn copy of Icha Icha Tactics. She was halfway through her second read-through so she may as well do the thing properly.

 

* * *

 

“Ah, that’s the part where Keiko discovers that the microfilm is sewn into the lining of the Mariko’s bikini and has to search her for it, isn’t it?”

Sakura lurched awake. Her face was stuck to the desk next to her copy of Icha Icha Tactics, her breath ruffling the pages. She raised her head, blinking wildly around the library.

She came face to face with Kakashi-sensei’s eyepatch. His other visible eye was crinkled into a smile.

He was perched on the desk, one leg kicking idly, leaning his face way too close to hers. When he saw she was waking properly, he leaned back.

“Uh,” she said. She blinked some more. Mercy, but she was _tired_.

He tugged her copy of Icha Icha Tactics further away from her, examining the scene. “It is,” he said with a satisfied nod. “I prefer Paradise, myself, but I think Tactics is a strong addition to the series.”

What? Sakura squinted. “What time is it?”

Kakashi-sensei’s visible eye flicked from her book to her face. “Oh... two thirty? Ish. You do know that the campus is _closed_ , don’t you?”

“Is it?” she gave him huge, innocent eyes.

The expression in his single visible eye said he wasn’t having any of it. “Maa... Student-san, unless you want to spend the next month organising my student records in your free time, you may want to go now,” he suggested.

Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. “Or somebody could gently suggest to Yamato-sempai that might like to check the _state_ of your student records,” she countered. “I’m sure he’d be interested to learn that you hadn’t handed back any of our first-week quizzes, too... All the other teachers have, Kakashi-sensei.”

He smiled beneath the scarf. “Maa, that would be terrible,” he sighed regretfully. “I suppose I’ll have to call security, then. Can’t have vulnerable first years wandering around the closed campus now, can we?” He tapped his chin. “It would be the responsible thing to do,” he decided mournfully.

Damn. She glowered at him, but picked up her bag. Things had probably settled down at home by now, anyway. “Fine,” she sniffed, kicking back her chair and getting to her feet. She held out her hand, eyeing her book.

Kakashi-sensei examined her palm.

“Hmm. You have a short life-line, Student-san,” he commented cheerfully.

“I’ll deal with it,” she growled, and yanked Icha Icha from his grasp, turned on her heel, and stalked for the exit.

“Haruno,” his voice was flat and hard and terribly serious all of a sudden.

She turned, looking at him over her shoulder. It was astonishing he even knew her name, considering how often he showed up to class.

“Don’t let me catch you again.” For a second there was a calculating look in his cool grey eye, but then he was smiling and saluting lazily at her. “Have a good week, Student-san!”

She left.

Kakashi-sensei was weirder than she’d thought.

But he had good taste in novels.

 

* * *

 

Sakura arrived home, unlocked the front door and sighed deeply. Somehow, impossibly, there was still the sound of chaos and fighting coming from down the hall. By now it had to be fighting for its own sake. She sighed and dropped her bag next to the door, pleased to relinquish the weight.

From deeper in the house, she heard Sasuke’s voice crack on a pained bellow.

Jerking upright, Sakura went from a weary slouch to a dash, feet thumping on the corridor, door swinging freely behind her.

Her momentum meant she had to catch herself on the doorframe of the kitchen, and then her eyes skimmed past Sasori and Deidara, past Naruto, even past Itachi, searching for the source of the sound. She was just in time to see Sasuke looking pale and shocked. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand, but she could still see that his already- bruised face was bright with a fresh wash of blood.

Sakura took one gasping breath and swallowed hard. Her eyes moved to Hidan, with his stupid mean smile and his scraped knuckles, and for a second she loathed him with so intense a hatred she felt like she couldn’t contain it. If she moved, she’d explode. Visions of violence snapped across her mind, vicious fantasies: thrown chairs, screaming with bared teeth and blood pounding, flesh that would give beneath her shaking fingers. She trembled.

Then there was a flash of black and a horrific, meaty _thunk_.

Sakura blinked. For a frozen second, she thought she’d somehow gained the ability to affect reality through _pure rage._

Hidan’s right hand was pinned to the kitchen table by the blade of a boning knife. His fingers twitched and flexed uselessly against it, straining - rather counterproductively - against the blade. The curve of the steel was bright under the overhead lighting.

Hidan swore, once, very loudly, and then went on in a stream of really creatively foul invective. His voice rose to a crazed shriek somewhere between the phrases ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ and ‘gonna yank out your guts and string you from the fucking ceiling fan.’   
Itachi straightened up, removing his white-knuckled hand from the kitchen knife. He looked at Hidan with his placid sloe eyes.

Everybody else in the room was very still. Hidan spat. He grabbed the handle and tugged. “Mother _fucker_ ,” he growled when it hurt more than it moved.

“Hidan-san,” Itachi said a faultlessly polite tone. “That was an extremely unwise decision.”

Hidan swore at him, but didn’t respond in any meaningful way, probably because he was busy trying to yank the knife out of his hand and the wooden tabletop without incurring further injury.

“Ah,” said Itachi, turning to the doorway. “Sakura-san. It’s good to see that you’re safe. Please excuse me,” he added. “I must take Sasuke to the emergency department.”

He took Sasuke by the wrist.

“Eh?” Naruto’s loud voice cut in. “The emergency department?” He leaned way into Sasuke’s personal space, his nose an inch away from his friend’s jaw. “Are you gonna be okay?”

“Shut up,” said Sasuke, putting one hand on Naruto’s looming face and shoving him away. Naruto sputtered and yelled, but Sakura was focused on her other friend. Sasuke’s voice sounded all wrong: pained and nasal. Sakura thought his nose was probably broken, and she winced in sympathy.

Sasuke looked at Sakura hovering in the doorway. It was hard to tell his expression through his natural scowling countenance anyway, but all the blood made it nearly impossible. But she could definitely tell when he shifted his attention from Sakura to Itachi. His expression turned absolutely poisonous.

Sakura wasn’t really sure what had gone on between them - Itachi had mentioned some kind of family difficulty, but Sasuke was tricky to handle and hard to communicate with on a good day. It seemed plain to her that she needed to keep her mouth shut about it.

While she was at it, she thought maybe she should not talk to either of them about the knife sticking out of Hidan’s hand. “I hope you feel better soon, Sasuke,” she said, polite out of sheer self-defence.

The comment drew his attention back to her. Sasuke took a breath through his mouth, probably gearing up for a really vicious commentary, but Itachi tugged on him.

“Come along, foolish little brother,” he said serenely, ignoring his reluctance and foul looks, and drew him inexorably away down the corridor.

“Hey!” Naruto yelled after them. “Teme --”

He was cut off by the slam of the front door.

There was silence for a long moment, punctuated by the soundtrack of Hidan’s angry curses.

“Itachi’s fucked up, yeah,” Deidara said, scratching his chin.

“Coming from the man who blew up a school building,” Sasori noted. Sakura thought that this was a fairly good point, as it happened. Deidara was hardly in a position to be telling other people they were messed up.

Sakura took a deep breath. Her heart rate was slowing, and now she had the time to glance around the kitchen and - other than the occasional spatter of blood - take stock of what was actually going on.

At some point, Kakuzu had returned home, and now he was glowering while he inspected the place where Hidan’s hand met the table.

“Just fucking hurry up,” Hidan grumbled.

“Quiet,” Kakuzu advised him tersely.

Deidara was perched on the edge of the table itself with one foot propped on the back of a chair. His hair and skin were blackened around the edges, and he looked tired and a little concerned about Itachi’s mental state. He also looked kind of satisfied, which Sakura had to suspect meant that something, somewhere, was on fire. Sasori was leaning against the sink, coolly eyeing the room from a distance over a cup of the foul sludge he called coffee.

Naruto was bruised on the neck and his hands were scratched.

“Hi,” said Sakura from the doorway, feeling a strange combination of pleasure and resentment. She was happy to see Naruto - and, actually, Sasuke, for the few minutes he was actually present. But she also didn’t really enjoy the stupid chaos the pair had kicked up over Hidan.

She wasn’t even going to think about how Itachi had _actually, seriously stabbed_ _somebody_ until she had some space.

“Are we all done being idiots now?” she inquired.

Naruto turned like he hadn’t noticed her - somehow - and then scrambled over the table - Hidan shrieked at him - and slammed into her, wrapping his arms around her in a giant, slightly sweaty bear hug. “SAKURA-CHAN,” he bellowed.

It was a relieved bellow, but she still kind of wanted to hit him for being an idiot. She heaved a deep sigh for patience and wriggled one arm free so she could pat his fluffy blond head instead. “Hi, Naruto,” she said.

He looked at her with big, serious blue eyes. “Ne, ne, that guy...” he pointed over his shoulder at Hidan with one hand. His expression morphed into a scowl when his eyes fell on Hidan. “He was sleeping in your bed!”

Yes, she thought sourly, she‘d noticed that. Along with, apparently, everybody else.“Sleeping bag,” she corrected, disentangling herself grumpily.

Naruto’s eyes went wide. “So he _was_?”

“Naruto, you know he was, you saw him there,” she pointed out.

She heard Hidan snort derisively. Tiredly, Deidara leaned over and thumped a closed fist on top of Hidan’s head.

“Shut _up_ , yeah.”

“Motherf--!”

Kakuzu smacked a hand over Hidan’s mouth.

“Shhh,” said Sasori, staring at them with blank eyes over his cup. “It’s quiet time now.” His lips quirked around the edges.

Slowly, Kakuzu removed his hand. Hidan’s bright eyes glowered at him. Through what seemed like some kind of Herculean effort, he said nothing.

“I’m going to remove the knife,” Kakuzu said, slowly and carefully, like he was talking to a small, intellectually troubled child. “You will want to stay still.”

Deidara snorted. “Unlikely, yeah,” he said, watching the proceedings with interest.

“Shut the fuck up,” Hidan growled. His voice broke on a pained yelp when Kakuzu gripped the handle of the knife and _yanked_.

It came out in a wash of blood and a stream of cursing.

“Sakura-chan~!” Hands descended onto Sakura’s shoulders from behind. She jumped and yelped.

Tobi reeled back, clutching his ear and pouting. “Oww,” he said. “Sakura-chan is _loud_.”

Sakura pressed a hand to her chest and exhaled slowly. “You startled me,” she said lamely. She was beginning to suspect that Tobi got a thrill out of making other people jump in shock.

“Not as loud as you,” said Deidara darkly, looking over his shoulder briefly before returning his gaze to Hidan and Kakuzu.

“Mou, sempai,” he said petulantly, looking at Deidara’s back with huge, wobbling eyes. “So mean.”

“Ne, ne, Sakura-chan,” Naruto said, recapturing her attention as he started waving his bruised hands. He looked terribly earnest. “You can’t just let strange men sleep in your bed! Especially not guys like that!” he pointed at Hidan dramatically.

Sakura raised her eyebrows at him. “Is that so,” she said, feeling that what she did with her own bed - sleeping bag! - was her decision and not really his.

He nodded emphatically. “A guy and a girl sleeping together, that’s...” he waved one hand. It was an expressive gesture to be sure, but she couldn’t absolutely determine what it was expressing.

“That’s..?”

“It’s perverted!” he blurted.

“It wasn’t,” she said flatly. And if it had been, that would be her business. But she couldn’t say that here, because if Hidan heard her suggest something like that he’d never shut up about it. “He was hurt. I needed to keep an eye on him.”

That was her story and she was sticking to it. ‘He was hurt,’ doubtless sounded a lot better than, ‘he begged and bitched and I was sleepy and lazy.’

“It’s not because it’s perverted,” Deidara said, shifting his perch on the table to face them. He kept rubbing a blister on the outside of his arm. It seemed to hurt, because he flinched, but he kept on doing it.

Naruto whirled on him, more interested in arguing with Deidara than listening to Sakura. “Eh? It is too perverted! When a guy and a girl sleep together, they --” he trailed off, flushing red around the edges.

Sasori snorted quietly.

“Not that, nobody cares about that,” Deidara waved that off. “It’s because it’s _Hidan_ , yeah?”

“Hey!” snapped Hidan, jerking toward Deidara.

Kakuzu, who was trying to patch him up, still had a grip on his hand. He reached up and smacked Hidan on the nose like a naughty kitten.

Hidan turned on him furiously and opened his mouth to speak. Kakuzu did something to his hand that made the blond trail off in blistering curses instead of finishing whatever he was going to say.

“Tobi is just glad Sakura-chan is okay,” he said, beaming down at her. He patted her head gently with one hand. “Everybody was worried!”

“Define ‘everybody’,” Sasori murmured to his coffee.

“Define _worried_ ,” Hidan growled.

“ _I_ was worried," Deidara interrupted. “You didn’t answer your phone,” he said, brows furrowing.

“I was at work. Hidan-san and Kakuzu-san knew where I was, and Sasori-san called Konan-san. It was fine. There was absolutely no need to freak out and run around like idiots just because you found another living person in my space,” she added with a glower for Naruto.

“But it was a _guy_!” Naruto said again. He sounded terribly distressed by this fact. Sakura was torn between wanting to make him feel better and wanting to smack him.

“It was _Hidan_ ,” Deidara repeated.

Hidan lunged at him, ripping his hand out of Kakuzu’s grasp. The scarred man looked down at his empty hands, heaved a sigh, and began packing the first aid supplies away.

Deidara and Hidan went toppling to the floor in a clatter of wood and metal. Unsurprisingly, Deidara took hold of Hidan’s injured hand and squeezed his fingers tightly.

“FUCK,” Hidan bellowed, hooking his leg behind Deidara’s. The shorter man yelped and went sprawling over, cracking his head against the tiles. Hidan kneed him in the gut.

Wheezing and struggling not to contract into a ball to protect his belly, Deidara found some leverage to tumble them over. He landed with a lean thigh either side of Hidan’s rib cage, with his teeth bared and his face alight with anticipation. He squeezed harder on Hidan’s hand.

Hidan hissed and dissolved into pained cursing. There was blood on the tiles.

Deidara made a wild, pleased little sound of satisfaction.

“I don’t think you should live with these guys,” said Naruto, eyeing the pile of long, lean-muscled limbs and messy blond hair. “They seem dangerous.”

“I don’t think _these guys_ should be living with these guys,” she said, laughing and hoping he’d drop that idea immediately. She went to the sink to get a glass of water, careful not to get too far into Sasori’s personal space. If there was a single thing she’d learned about Sasori, it was that he liked his personal space. He could get a little restless if it was infringed upon too often.

“Yeah,” Naruto said, still watching the Hidan And Deidara Show playing out on the floor, “but you’re a girl. And they’re _guys_. It’s more dangerous for you, you could get really hurt.”

Sakura breathed a sigh. She drained her water and patted his shoulder gently. “That’s nice, Naruto,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital with Sasuke?”

Naruto frowned at her. “Pretty sure I should stay here with you,” he said mulishly, glancing over to Sasori and Kakuzu.

“Really?” she said quietly, leaning closer. “I don’t think Sasuke necessarily wants to be all alone with his brother.” Then she paused. “And I have laundry and homework to do,” she added thoughtfully in a more normal voice.

It was much more likely that she’d spend time mopping Hidan’s blood from last night off her floorboards, but Naruto probably didn’t need to know that.

He eyed her stubbornly. She reminded herself that he was genuinely worried for her and she didn’t really need to punch him.

She huffed. “What is it that you want me to do?” she asked directly, crossing her arms over her breasts.

“Find someone else to stay with until you get a new place?” he suggested.

Kakuzu’s head snapped up. She saw it in her periphery.

“...No,” she said with a sigh.

“Come on, Sakura-chan. Isn’t Hinata-chan going to university here?”

“Yes, but I’m not moving out. I just got here.” Sakura turned away. “Did you bring my bed?” she wondered.

“It’s in your room.” He said, but he was still watching her with furrowed brows.

“Awesome,” she said cheerfully. “Thanks,” she added, moving closer and giving him a one-armed hug. For a second he didn’t return it and then, reluctantly, he wrapped one arm around her waist.

“Sakura-chan...”

“ _No_ ,” she repeated, ruffling his blond hair with one hand. It was surprisingly soft. “Don’t even go there, okay?”

His big blue eyes looked immeasurably sad, but he relented. “If you have any problems - _any problems_ -” he looked at Hidan, who was clutching his injured thigh and trying to choke Deidara one-handed, “call me. Or Sasuke. Teme’s probably closer.”

“Sure," lied Sakura easily, pleased to have won without much of a fight. Then she steered Naruto toward the corridor. She changed the subject without any pretence at subtlety. “Seriously, was Sasuke’s nose broken? I didn’t get a good look.”

“That blond bastard hit him in the face,” Naruto said, glancing balefully over his shoulder at Hidan one last time. Reluctantly he added, “I probably should go wait with him...”

"I'm sure he'd appreciate that," said Sakura, still lying through her teeth.

Tobi then helpfully - but probably unintentionally - obscured his view of the kitchen by taking up the doorway, waving brightly to him. “Bye-bye~!” he called sweetly.

“Thank you for bringing my furniture,” Sakura said cheerfully once she’d persuaded Naruto all the way to the door and gently manoeuvred him onto the verandah. “It’s a really big help.”

Naruto tucked one hand behind his head. “Aah, well, I’m here to help,” he said.

He still didn’t look entirely cheerful but she thought he’d recover by the time he reached home again, given that the next several hours would probably be taken up with annoying Sasuke in the emergency department waiting room.

Sakura closed the door and sagged against it, enjoying the dim light and relative calm in the hallway. She could still hear the muffled arguing of Deidara and Hidan in the kitchen.

Somebody should probably do something about Hidan’s injured hand.

Somebody who wasn’t her.

Sakura heaved a sigh, feeling a weird combination of tired, resentful and guilty. She didn’t really want to go back in there, actually. She could go up to her room and hide there, but she wasn’t really prepared to face the blood stains on the floor. She didn’t really want to see the bed, either. It was a symbol of Naruto’s kindness, like a tangible guilt trip that would be haunting her bedroom.

She probably could have been nicer to Naruto.

She rubbed her hair back from her forehead. Dammit.

Restless. That was it. She was feeling restless.

Decisively, Sakura headed upstairs to find her sneakers. She returned to the ground floor in black shorts and a red sleeveless top, then dug around for her mp3 player.

Then she ignored Tobi calling out to her and went for a run.

Fifteen minutes later she was wondering why any person would do such an awful thing to herself.

Twenty minutes after _that_ , she felt like actually, maybe this wasn’t so bad and she could actually just keep running in these nice, easy five minute intervals for an hour. That wouldn’t be so bad.

An hour and ten minutes after she’d left, Sakura saw her own street again and almost wept out of sheer gratitude. Her lungs ached, her shoulders were tight, her soles were burning and her legs weren’t sure they existed anymore.

She could feel sweat rolling down one side of her face, and she was betting that her bright red skin probably looked awful against her sweaty pink hair.

_So classy._

Sakura knew she probably looked a complete fright, and found herself hoping nobody in her house managed to get a glimpse of her before she’d stretched and showered.

She didn’t feel restless anymore, though.

After she teetered precariously up the stairs to the second floor, she showered - for a value of ‘showered’ that meant ‘existed wearily under the hot water for a while and kind of half-heartedly patted some soap’ - and then went to her bedroom.

Somebody - presumably Naruto, because she couldn’t really imagine any of the others doing it- had assembled her bed and managed to get the mattress on the base. She felt a little flare of guilt in her guts at the sight.

With a sigh, she grabbed her phone, turned it on and, ignoring the other texts piled up, opened a new one to Naruto.

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 5:35 PM  
Message body: Hey, bed! You have no idea how happy I am to be reunited with that thing. Thanks for setting it up. : )>

Guilt assuaged, Sakura closed and locked her door. She examined the stains on her floor and the flaky bits of old blood in her sleeping bag - which was, by the by, completely gross - and looked longingly at her solid, wooden-framed bed and its old but comfy mattress.

She decided she had just enough energy to put some sheets on the bed and crawl inside. Cleaning up Hidan’s mess could wait for the morning.

Ignoring everything else, Sakura flopped into her bed. She slept the sleep of the righteous and it was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like this chapter very much but I'm just gonna get over that and post it. Yeeep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura contemplates the problem of Itachi, has brief weird chats with Zetsu (as you do) and Sasori (as you generally don't), contemplates violence, goes jogging with the boys from the Nekketsu Dojo, studies a lot, and asks somebody out on a date.

Sakura woke up again much later. She blinked fuzzily around at her bedroom, confused by her higher-than-expected vantage point atop her bed. Then she remembered the day's events and rolled over, covering her face and groaning pathetically.

A second later she sat bolt upright and scrambled for her phone.

She didn’t bother texting Sasuke - he rarely responded. Instead she called him and then huddled on her bed in the dark with the glowing phone pressed to her ear.

“You have reached the message bank of,” said an overly-friendly automated voice, and then other voices, in bright counterpoint, “UCHIHA USAGI-CHAAAA--” “--ZUMAKI! Give me the -” something crashed, and then static.

Sakura rolled her eyes and hung up. After a second’s consideration, she called Itachi.

She had exactly one ring to think _oh my god I am calling Itachi what do I say help help abort!_ He did her the very great favour of picking up on the second ring and cutting short the time she could think about it. “Sakura-san? Is everything okay? It’s past midnight.”

Sakura dropped her head into her palm. Past midnight. She hadn’t even checked. At least Itachi didn’t sound sleepy. She wasn’t sure if she could handle the embarrassment of waking him up in the middle of the night.

On the other hand, she’d get to hear his deep voice all groggy and sleepy-sounding... Hmm.

“Why the hell does she have _your_ number?” she heard Sasuke’s voice come out as a slurred, unhappy hiss.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even check the time - I just woke up,” she said, more confidently than she felt. Itachi was going to think she was an idiot. If he didn’t already. Dammit. It was a good thing he couldn‘t see her, because she was definitely red. Again. “Everything’s fine, thank you. I just wanted to make sure Sasuke was okay? He didn’t answer his phone.”

“I see,” said Itachi very neutrally. “His nose is broken, but they said there would be no complications. I’m just driving him home now. Sasuke, it’s for you,” he said then, and there was a fuzzy moment, a mumbled curse, and the strangely loud sound of a ticking car indicator.

Then: “Why do you have that bastard’s phone number?” Sasuke growled into the phone. If Itachi said anything in response to that insult, she didn’t hear it.

“He helped me find a house,” she said breezily.

Sasuke grunted. It didn’t really seem like a happy sort of grunt. She considered what Sasuke knew of her housemates and had to admit they probably hadn’t made a great impression.

“How’s your face?” Sakura asked, eager to change the subject.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

There was a silence.

“Is that all you wanted?” Sasuke asked finally.

Sakura made an annoyed noise. Really, she didn’t know why she bothered calling in the first place. Except, of course, that a little sliver of guilt and worry was assuaged inside her now. Sasuke was going to be fine. Thank god.

“Pretty much,” she agreed.

“Okay,” said Sasuke, and then he hung up.

Sakura would have been more offended, but Sasuke was Sasuke. He made Kakuzu look positively chatty.

She flopped back to her bed. Her bad feelings were assuaged, but her curiosity was piqued once again. There was something very unpleasant about how those Uchiha brothers interacted, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what had gone wrong between them. They didn’t seem like the type to clash - Itachi didn’t seem like the type to clash with anybody --

Her train of thought derailed there.

Because hadn’t Itachi stabbed Hidan just a few hours ago?

Like, actually stabbed him. With a knife.

Sakura’s brain wasn’t really ready to process that idea. Itachi was... quiet, strangely kind, very polite. He didn’t stand out in her mind as a dangerous person.

But when Hidan had gone after Sasuke, Itachi had _flipped_.

She wondered if it was just because Sasuke was his little brother. People were supposed to have strong feelings about things like that, weren’t they? Sakura was an only child, so she wasn’t sure. Maybe Itachi just had a violent streak.

She frowned uncertainly.

Somebody should probably check on Hidan, she thought, but she really didn’t want it to be her. She wondered if Kakuzu would do it. Perhaps, in the interest of Hidan being well enough to go to work and pay his rent.

Hmm, yes, that sounded like Kakuzu.

At least you never had to worry about his motives.

She probably wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep easily, now that she’d woken herself up so thoroughly. Sakura rolled out of bed and padded to the balcony, where she threw the doors open. It was a nice night outside, with a gentle breeze and a clear sky. The stars shone bright above.

She was mildly surprised to find her neighbour perched on the railing of his balcony, legs swinging freely over a long drop, a steaming cup of something cradled in one hand. Clearly not afraid of heights, then.

He looked over at her. There was better light out this time, and she could definitely see that his colouring was different on either side of his body. Sakura had no idea what could cause that. Pigment disorders weren’t usually quite so well-organised.

“Ah... Zetsu-san, was it?”

“Aa,” he agreed. He looked over at her. “Your housemates were very lively today, Sakura-san,” he commented. “Although they seemed to calm down a bit when you arrived home.”

“Uh...” she paused. “Yeah, sorry about that. They kind of overreacted to a few things and I think it all got a bit out of hand...” Very out off hand, what with the nose-breaking and the stabbing and all.

“Mm,” said Zetsu placidly. “Well, that sort of thing can happen.” If he was disturbed by any of the screaming or violence or - she suspected from the smell - burning things, he didn’t show it.

“You seem very calm about it, Zetsu-san,” she pointed out, peering more closely at him. Once you ignored the strange condition of his skin, his face had very fine features.

“They’re very loud,” he growled, eyes narrowed and malicious. Then the expression dropped away and everything was serene again. His golden eyes flicked to her. “I wouldn’t live next door to them if I wasn’t used to it,” he said mildly.

“Uh,” she said again. “Right.”

“People like that...” he sipped his tea again, stroking the leaf of a potted datura bush when it caught his attention by shivering in the night breeze. “They’re always going to cause a mess.”

“People like that?” Sakura raised her eyebrows. While she admitted that he was probably right, she could think of no way in which the other four inhabitants of the house could be grouped as one. They were so different.

He turned to her. He was so strange looking, she almost couldn’t judge his expression because of his strange pigmentation. “With the work they do,” he said, waving one hand casually.

Sakura paused. “Right,” she agreed.

“We should poison them all and get some sleep,” he said, not unpleasantly. Then his brow furrowed. “No, that wouldn’t be kind.”

“It wouldn’t,” Sakura agreed. “Poison is definitely not a kind solution.”

“She’s right,” he murmured, and then made a very disdainful noise in his throat.

Sakura officially had no idea what was going on anymore. “Um...” she said slowly. “Are you all right?”

“What?" he snapped. Then he blinked at her. “I have a condition,” he said a little defensively.

Sakura’s knee-jerk response was to answer with ‘yes, that was becoming obvious,’ but she held back with a Herculean effort of will. “Oh,” she said instead. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “Does it have to do with...” she waved vaguely - and probably rudely, she realised with a wince - at his skin.

He looked at his mismatched hands. “None of your business,” he hissed, glowering up at her.

She flinched and held up her hands defensively. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to--”

“It’s fine. Ignore him. No, my skin is something different.” He paused. “You might say I’m special,” he added drily, showing her his teeth. Was that a smile? She wasn’t sure.

Also: Ignore _him_?

He followed her gaze back to his hands. “It was a monobenzone accident,” he said serenely.

 _Monobenzone_? Was he joking? He sounded very serious. She wondered how somebody had managed to accidentally put skin-lightening medication on exactly one half of his body for several months until it became permanently lighter.

She blinked twice, and then decided not to ask. He probably just didn’t want to talk about it. “I see,” she said, in a tone that indicated that she very much did not.

Zetsu nodded solemnly. “Are you having difficulty sleeping again?” he inquired.

She shook her head. “Not really. I went to bed at five something, so I can’t get back to sleep now.”

Even if she had been having trouble sleeping, she probably wouldn’t have admitted to it, given what had happened last time. She had no desire to be faced with an awkward situation where she had to find some way to refuse another drugged brew.

Honestly, Zetsu seemed like a much better candidate for suddenly losing his mind and stabbing somebody than Itachi had.

He nodded and didn’t pursue that line of questioning.

“Do you have a job, Zetsu-san?” she asked quietly after a few moments. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but she was definitely curious about him.

“A little gardening, here and there,” he said, lifting one shoulder in a delicate shrug. He patted the datura again, like it was some kind of beloved pet. “I like the poisonous ones the best.”

“You seem to be very good at it,” Sakura said politely. “I’m terrible at gardening,” she confessed after a second of watching him fondle the plant. “I almost killed a rosemary bush once.”

“Are you retarded?” he said derisively. Sakura blinked, but didn’t respond immediately. She was starting to pick up a pattern to his rude outbursts. After a moment, Zetsu turned his eyes back to her. “That is... impressive,” he murmured.

It was almost as though he hadn’t even been around to hear that first comment. How confusing. Sakura shook her head and smiled politely. “I think, for the plants’ sake, I’d better not try any gardening of my own.”

Zetsu drained the rest of his cup. “I think that might be for the best,” he said, with a half-smile in her direction. “I will begin to feel sleepy soon, so it’s best I return inside. Good night, Sakura-san.”

“Goodnight,” she said, and watched him go. Despite his strange colouring and the relative brightness of the moon and stars in the clear night, he seemed to disappear into the shadows of his balcony with astonishing ease.

Sakura didn’t stay out much longer than he did.

What a strange man, she thought as she settled back into bed that night. She wasn’t sure what to make of him, except that he was fascinating and maybe a little creepy. And that he seemed to be taking careful watch of all the house’s comings and goings.

Huh.

...maybe she’d better get up and double check that her balcony door was locked, too.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the week passed in a blur. Sasori retreated to his room in silence and secrecy, and for the most part only the changes in the level of instant coffee in the jar assured Sakura that he was actually still alive.

Hidan’s injuries didn’t seem to hold him back much, despite his continued refusal to accept painkillers. Kakuzu seemed to be having some kind of issue with that man, because he rose to the bait every time Hidan did something to instigate an argument. It couldn’t be worth Kakuzu’s time - in the literal sense, even.

Deidara wasn’t precisely holding back, either, and given the frequency with which Hidan chose to be provocative or cruel, it was a very violent week.

Sakura skirted the edges of this violence with increasingly practised ease. After a while, the sounds of furious battle seemed more or less commonplace. They raised her heart rate a bit, but she didn’t bother to feel too concerned about a fight unless somebody pulled a weapon.

She wasn’t entirely sure she was ever going to get used to that level of casual violence, but exposure certainly made her feel more kindly disposed toward Itachi. Maybe he’d just had the very great advantage of context.

She discovered that it was actually Deidara who was the most likely to escalate to weaponry - even when he wasn’t brandishing an aerosol can and a stove lighter with utterly reckless excitement, he had no qualms about directing his opponent into a wall, a random piece of furniture, or, in one notably vicious case, into a visiting Tobi. Probably, Sakura decided, it was because he was a lot shorter than Hidan or Kakuzu.

But it wasn’t like Deidara was the only one who seemed to take pulling out seriously lethal weapons was something to be taken in stride. Kakuzu she’d seen pull on a pair of aging leather gloves with heavy lead plates across the knuckles, and Hidan always seemed to have some kind of bladed weapon on him, even if he seemed to prefer using his bare hands.

Sasori didn’t seem to have much time for petty violence, or, in fact, anything except whatever he got up to alone in his room. Initially Sakura thought that this was because the man was _tiny_ , and a fight with, say, Kakuzu, he’d be grossly outmatched by sheer weight. However, it turned out that this assumption was grossly underestimating the redhead’s pure viciousness. But strangely, he didn’t seem to thrill to the possibility of violence like the others did.

“It’s a waste of time to start fights,” he said at one point when Sakura hesitantly questioned him. She wouldn’t have hesitated with the others, but she still felt like she barely knew Sasori. “There are many things I could spend that time doing. It bores me.”

They were in the kitchen, a chance meeting during Sakura’s latest attempt to cook something healthy for herself. The vegetables looked very nutritious, by which she meant unappetising.

“You’re certainly very good at it, though,” she pointed out, helpfully fetching his cup as she avoided eating her spinach.

He eyed the cup in her hand and then, after a second, took it away. “I didn’t say I couldn’t, just that fighting is usually not the most expedient way to get what I want,” he said shortly. “I hate wasting time.”

Sakura didn’t really know what to say to that. It stood to reason that Sasori wasn’t a pacifist, since he certainly didn’t pull his punches. But that was still rather cold, wasn’t it...?

“So I don’t start fights,” he said after a second, in a very flat and serious voice. He mixed up his horrible coffee and drew away from the bench. “But I do finish them.”

And with that comment, he left.

“Well,” muttered Sakura to her spinach. “Thank god that wasn’t really ominous or anything.”

The following week the university campus finally opened again, and classes resumed as normal. Between catching up on the missed week and getting to her shifts at TRIVIA, Sakura felt like she had barely any time to breathe.

Gai-sensei and Lee didn’t stop showing up at her balcony at stupid o’clock, though. Tenten was usually with them, but occasionally Sakura received a text message letting her know that the other girl was busy with something else - usually another kind of training, as it happened.

It barely mattered, since Sakura didn’t even fight them anymore. She just rolled out of bed, pulled on her leggings and sneakers, and let them inside so they could go out through the front door. Gai-sensei seemed to accept this surrender as a show of her ‘youthful vigour.’ Sakura thought it was more like a compromise based on the sad fact that she didn’t have the resources to waste time and energy refusing him and then capitulating to his persuasive force anyway.

She was actually starting to understand Sasori’s perspective, in a less psychopathic sort of way. Fighting about stuff could be a waste of time she couldn’t afford.

It helped that running was getting easier. It was maybe not a drastic improvement, but the biggest muscles in her legs didn’t ache anymore, and she could run for eight-minute blocks without feeling like she was going to pass out, throw up or both.

She still staggered home covered in sweat and trembling, though.

Gai-sensei cheerfully informed her that if she wasn’t feeling like that she wasn’t doing it right.

“Okay,” she said, too exhausted to bother arguing. “Have a good day,” she waved vaguely at the pair of crazy people.

Lee shot her a thumbs up and a blinding smile.

In basically every other moment, though, Sakura spent as much time studying and working at the cafe as she could.

“It’s a really good feeling to have your savings grow in a positive direction again,” she said, watching Deidara mix another new glaze without any protective gear. At least he wasn’t in the kitchen this time. Instead, because it was a lovely, still evening, they were on the verandah. Sakura was flopped across the dilapidated old couch out there and Deidara was cross-legged and barefoot on a faded cushion.

“I’ll have to take your word on it, yeah,” Deidara said, scrunching up his nose. “Any money I make goes into projects.”

“Yeah, art seems like it would be an expensive course of study,” Sakura admitted. “Kakuzu-san says you’re just bad at saving money, though,” she added with a tiny, provocative grin.

“Kakuzu has absolutely no idea of the point, value or quality of art,” Deidara said scornfully. “Since it means nothing to him, his opinion is about as valuable as a fuse without a light.”

“Probably,” Sakura murmured, closing her eyes. She kind of wanted to just drift off there. She could be reasonably sure that Deidara would wake her up before he went inside, and the couch was astonishingly comfy despite its ugliness.

Then reality reasserted itself and she opened her eyes again with a groan. “I should be studying,” she confessed. Her voice came out so flat and unenthused that she almost sounded the way Kakuzu did about most things.

“Screw studying,” Deidara said cheerfully. “Have a drink with me, hang out here - oh, oh! When it gets properly dark we can set off fireworks! It’ll be fun, yeah.” He grinned at her.

That _did_ sound like fun. Sakura contemplated it longingly.

“Nnngggh,” she said after a while. “Nope,” she sighed. “Gotta be ready to answer Tsunade-sama’s totally random questions tomorrow morning. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s amazing. But she’s also completely awful. She just points at people and shouts questions about things we covered ages ago, or something we’re not meant to cover for another week, or really obscure stuff from the supplementary readings.”

“That sounds like some kind of medieval torture, yeah.” Deidara looked like he couldn’t think of a worse possible way to spend his time. “I’d rather have sex with a thumbscrew, yeah.”

“Graphic,” Sakura snorted.

“True fact,” he countered.

Eventually she heaved herself off the couch and went upstairs to study. She was completely unsurprised when she saw bright flashes lighting up the night sky two hours later. Deidara was fully capable of entertaining himself, after all.

 

* * *

 

Once university was open again, Sakura had ample opportunity to run into Itachi again and again, and she was determined to be prepared.

She was _very_ prepared.

“This is getting ridiculous,” she said at one point to the mirror in the girls’ loo. Her shift at TRIVIA was finished, and now she was carefully applying mascara on the off chance that out of the tens of thousands of people who studied at Senjuu University she might run into Itachi.

It was becoming kind of crazy and neurotic.

Maybe her housemates were starting to rub off on her?

At any rate, it had to be stopped. She was much too old for this idiocy, surely.

She rubbed her forehead, glowering at her reflection. She didn’t even like wearing makeup.

“Well,” she decided to her reflection finally. “I guess I’ll just have to get it out of my system.”

There was nothing else for it. She’d have to ask him out.

 

* * *

 

Sakura tried to send several texts to Ino. She typed them out, read them, reread them, and discarded them one by one. The prospect of her enthusiasm - and her passive-aggressive gloating in the event of failure - was too daunting.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:16 PM  
Message body: It’s okay for a girl to ask a guy out, right?>

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:16 PM  
Message body: hypothetically, I mean.>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:19 PM  
Message body: i think so? can’t see why it would matter unless it’s some stupid guy thing. brb getting a male pov>

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:20 PM  
Message body: YOU CAN'T TELL ANYBODY. YOU DEFINITELY CAN'T TELL LEE.>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:28 PM  
Message body: you are very concerned about this hypothetical situation ;) neji says anybody who is insulted rather than flattered must be unworthy of my attention and should be shot.>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:30 PM  
Message body: also now neji thinks i have some secret unrequited love who turned me down. omg you owe me.>

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:31 PM  
Message body: You’re the best.>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:45 PM  
Message body: i accept tribute in the form of free food.>

 

* * *

 

It was still a terrifying prospect. So terrifying, in fact, that she chickened out the first two times she saw him in a crowd of people at Senjuu and ran away with a rapid heart beat and a sweaty face.

“You’re ridiculous,” she muttered to herself, staring at her ceiling in the darkness at night. “This is stupid.”

Tomorrow, she thought.

If she saw Itachi tomorrow, she’d do it. Somehow.

She went to sleep half-hoping she didn’t run across him the next day.  
  


* * *

 

Sakura did, of course.

She almost literally ran into him while she was leaving the student centre. There was a blind corner and then she was suddenly face to face with Uchiha Itachi.

In the time since she’d last seen him he’d somehow become more attractive. How could somebody like him actually be real? She didn’t understand at all. She ached just looking at him, like the fact of his existence was causing her brain some obscure kind of pain.

And that was _before_ he opened his mouth and had to be polite and charming and so painfully, subtly sweet. God.

She felt stupid and terribly insecure, and like her face was rapidly going hot.

“It was very good of you to call,” Itachi said to her, sounding a little stilted. “Sasuke was on strong pain medication, so perhaps he wasn’t at his best, but I’m sure he appreciates -”

“Itachi-san,” said Sakura, holding up one slightly trembly hand to stall him. She had no idea how to segue from ‘your brother got kind of badly injured, gee, that‘s bad’ to ‘please date me!’ She swallowed. “I can honestly tell you that I didn’t notice. I’ve known Sasuke for years. He’s _always_ like that.”

Itachi looked a little lost for a second. “He... wasn’t like that when I was younger,” he said.

In the part of her brain she wasn’t dedicated for panic, Sakura wondered how long it had been since Itachi had actually sat down and spoken to Sasuke, because she couldn’t for the life of her remember a time when he’d been friendly or talkative. And, come to think of it, Itachi hadn’t even spoken to his brother at their graduation ceremony...

She frowned. It didn’t sound like the kind of relationship worth stabbing somebody for. She couldn’t puzzle them out. She didn’t want to upset or offend Itachi by asking. While she _could_ ask Sasuke she was certain he’d either deflect or just stop talking to her.

It was probably best - and certainly easiest - not to pry. “It might be for the better, really,” she said, feeling her lips quirk. She felt more settled talking about this sort of thing. She relaxed a little - just a little, though. Her muscles still felt like taut wires. “If he smiled at all, ever, the female half of our graduating class may not have made it through the year.”

Itachi didn’t really smile a lot. His expressions got amused, or softened around the edges. That was what he did now, cutting a glance at her with pleased eyes.

She’d promised herself.

She had to do it.

If she didn’t, she’d never know.

She swallowed. “Itachi-san,” she said with a frantically pounding heart.

He looked at her attentively. His pleased expression drifted closer to concern.

Red faced and sweating and trembling, Sakura realised that she probably looked like the wrath of an unkind god.

That was exactly the impression she wanted to make, of course.

“Um,” she said. Could she actually say this? She had to, if she wanted to know. She licked her lips nervously. “I was wondering if, ah, maybe you wanted to... go out some time? Like...” she paused. She could do this. She was three quarters of the way there. “On a date?”

He blinked at her for a moment.

His expression was a lot more surprised than pleased.

Oh, that was bad.

Her face was burning. She felt a bit light headed.

“Oh,” he said at last. Then, with so much sincerity it made her heart ache for him: “Sakura-san, I’m so sorry.”

Oh, _god_. Shame made her feel sick. She wondered what he’d do if she just vomited. “No! It’s okay,” she waved her hands wildly. Her breath was probably coming too fast. “It’s fine! You don’t have to apologise, it’s -”

He caught one of her wrists to still her flailing. “Sakura-san,” he said, giving her a tiny and sincere, if regretful smile. “It’s nothing to do with you, I promise. I have a partner.”

“You... you do?” What! How come she’d never heard anything about the girl? Her eyebrows furrowed. “Oh,” she said lamely.

He let go of her and took a deep breath.

“My,” he was flushing a little, a faint and high thing across his cheeks. Five minutes ago the sight would probably have made her faint. “Ah, my housemate,” he said rubbing the back of his neck. “He’s - well, it’s fairly new.”

“Your...” she paused. “He?” Another pause. “ _Oh_. You -- you don’t like girls,” she said after a second.

“Not exactly, no.”

“Oh,” she said stupidly.

“I’m sorry if I did anything that seemed like I was leading you on, Sakura-san, I certainly didn’t intend to.”

She stared at him. Itachi? _Gay_? He didn’t seem gay. She wasn’t even entirely sure how to process the idea. Her brain was busy firing electrical signals to nowhere: abort! abort! Reboot in safe mode.

Itachi looked at her, and there was an awful guarded wariness creeping in behind his eyes. “Sakura-san?” he asked her cautiously.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling very embarrassed. “I didn’t think - It’s just a surprise, is all. Um, not that there’s anything wrong with that. At all. Definitely not.” She paused.

Itachi relaxed a little bit and that guarded look dissipated. “I see,” he said carefully.

She might as well be honest, she supposed. “I just feel like a complete idiot now,” she sighed. “I’ll probably need some time to get over that.” And, well, rejection hurt. Even if it wasn’t because of some kind of deficiency on her part. That fact blunted the blow, but it still hurt.

Itachi gave her a considering look. “I can understand that,” he said.

“You must think I’m horrible,” she blurted, feeling another swell of embarrassment. “I didn’t even _think_ of that.”

“Sakura-san,” he said drily. “I promise this isn’t the worst response I’ve received.”

It probably wasn’t the best, though. She was silent for a few long moments. They looked at each other. Itachi seemed as serene as ever, his face blank and his body language undemanding. She liked that about him, his ability to exist in comfortable silence with another person.

She liked a lot of things about him, actually.

Sakura swallowed again. “I... we can still be friends, right?” she asked.

Itachi blinked. After a second, his lips curved in a second sincere smile. “I’d like that, Sakura-san.”

“Just Sakura,” she said firmly. “I don’t need honorifics among friends.”

He gave her a surprised look, but acquiesced gracefully. “Itachi, then,” he agreed.

“So,” said Sakura, trying to put her mortification aside. “When do I get to meet your boyfriend?”

Itachi’s expressions might have been wholly under his control, but his capillaries sure weren’t. His blushes were _awesome_.

“I don’t...” he eyed her.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“I’ll text him,” he said, drawing out his phone.

Sakura grinned. Maybe it wasn’t wholly genuine, but she swore that by the time she met the mysterious boyfriend, it would be.

It _would_ be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohh, so many people are going to hate me for that one. LALALA THE AUTHOR CAN’T HEAR YOUR DISTRESSED CRIES.
> 
> I think popular conceptions of romance have a lot to answer for. Sakura is in fact not living in a rom-com. She isn’t _entitled_ to a romantic relationship, and certainly not to a Happily Ever After. Relationships, even the most commonly depicted, heterosexual, monogamous kinds, are things you get if you meet somebody awesome and you’re very lucky. 
> 
> Just a sec, let me get off my soap box.
> 
> Thank you to everybody who has commented! I love and appreciate comments very much. : )


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a meeting is arranged, nobody follows proper procedure and pizza is had.

Itachi had been very delicate about the topic of his sexuality. More than Sakura really felt it needed. She knew he was a very polite, reserved sort of person, but his guarded responses forced her to wonder if some people had reacted to him in some ways that were, well, less than supportive.

Sakura spent another half-hour wandering around campus with Itachi, dodging activists with petitions. One of the activists actually turned out to be handing out pizza coupons, which were significantly more interesting than a distressed leftist’s opinion of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Tucking away a few coupons, Sakura decided she quite liked how free stuff just showed up on campus sometimes. Promotional events were pretty cool.

She cut a sideways glance back at Itachi, contemplating. The boyfriend’s name was Hoshigaki Kisame and Sakura was meeting him in two days. She was pleased that Itachi, once having mentioned the delicate topic of his sexuality to her, was so open about his relationship. It seemed like a show of trust, since Itachi was usually so tight-lipped about his personal life.

On the other hand, she was still feeling kind of... hurt. Even though she’d been rejected in probably the nicest way possible, it still stung to be denied something she wanted so much. She did her best to disguise this from Itachi simply because there was nothing else to be done.  
Sometimes you couldn’t have what you wanted.

So you had to put your big girl pants on and get over it.

Sakura took a deep breath. She smiled. “I’m kind of excited, actually,” she admitted, surprised to find that it was at least partially true. He glanced at the pizza coupons as though she might have been talking about them instead of meeting his boyfriend. “For meeting Hoshigaki-san, I mean,” she clarified. “It would be interesting to see what kind of person catches your attention.”

Itachi’s face was expressionless, but after a moment’s silence he murmured, “I am beginning to regret my decision in arranging that meeting.”

She grinned. It wasn’t entirely forced.

 

* * *

 

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 2:10 PM  
Message body: so did you end up asking Mystery Dude?>

Sakura spent ten minutes examining her phone, wondering how to respond. Itachi was obviously a little bit sensitive about homosexuality. She wouldn’t feel quite right telling another person - even one he didn’t know.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 2:20 PM  
Message body: He said no. He’s dating someone..>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 2:24 PM  
Message body: that sucks. we should meet up and complain about it sometime.>

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 2:35 PM  
Message body: Lol! Yeah, with all of my nonexistent free time. I’ll try to figure something out.>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:27 PM  
Message body: i went through some very awkward conversations with lee and neji for nothing .>

Of course, by ten o’clock, Sakura was so bewildered by the rest of her life that it took her a full five seconds to remember what Tenten was even texting about.

 

* * *

 

Despite her attempts to force a cheerful attitude, Sakura was well and truly prepared to return home and have a good, hard sulk. She didn’t have to pretend for _herself_ , after all. As nice as it was to confirm that she was going to be able to stay friends with Itachi after that tremendously embarrassing conversation, Sakura still felt like she kind of wanted to drown herself just to end the sheer mortification of the event.

“Of course,” she muttered to herself on the bus, causing the person across the aisle from her to look at her warily, “the first time I ask a guy out he turns out to like other men.”

She leaned heavily against the window and watched the darkening streets go by. In the end though, her sulk had to be postponed.

Sakura turned the corner into her home street to the sight of police cars.

...crap.

What were the chances, she thought, that they were there for some _other_ household?

For a second, Sakura wasn’t sure if she should turn around and leave or if she should go and see what was happening. She knew she hadn’t done anything illegal - well, maybe she’d not-that-legally downloaded a bit of music occasionally, but she doubted anybody was coming to arrest her for that particular offence.

And, she considered, speeding up a little, if Kakuzu wasn’t home one of the others would have to talk to the police. She was pretty certain you could still be fined for swearing at police officers.

As she came closer she found the police cars empty and the door of her house standing open. She almost groaned aloud. Perfect.

Sakura stepped cautiously over the threshold where the door was swinging open. Immediately a uniformed figure appeared in the corridor. He was a big man, bearded, broad-shouldered. His sleeves were rolled up over his forearms. Somebody had bruised his jaw and ripped his shirt, and he didn’t look particularly happy to be there.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked shortly.

She frowned. She knew she was obligated to give the police her name and address if asked. “Haruno Sakura. I... live here?” said Sakura slowly, peering around. “What’s going on?”

He relaxed into a slouch. “You live here?”

She nodded. From somewhere near by she could hear the sound of Hidan swearing, loudly and angrily. She could also hear Deidara hiss at him to _just shut up_ , but it didn’t help much. At least, she supposed, that meant that her housemates were probably okay.

Unless the pair of them had managed to kill one of the others, of course.

“When did you move in?”

Sakura paused warily, unsure if she should answer. She was pretty sure she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. As far as she knew, several people in her house were responsible for relatively minor criminal offences - and, well, there was Deidara with his blowing up a school building, which wasn’t really that minor.

Well, she’d dated the lease when she signed it, she supposed. Some information wasn‘t that hard to get. “A couple weeks,” she said, staying still and tense in the doorway.

“So that was, what, a month after the twenty-sixth?”

Sakura thought about it. “Yes, about that. What’s this about?”

He nodded as though this was more or less what he’d expected. “Interesting,” he said. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “We’re here regarding a missing person,” he said and her stomach dropped. Was one of her housemates missing? But he went on before she could even begin to feel truly worried: “We have a warrant to search the premises and anybody on the premises at the time of the search.”

Sakura nodded slowly. “Um, can I see a copy of the paperwork?” she asked carefully.

He nodded and produced a notice. Sakura didn’t know anything at all about the search procedure, but she read through it swiftly and found that there was a lot of complicated wording about probable cause and where the police were allowed to search. It seemed like it was designed to allow police officers to search the premises for evidence that showed the commission of an indictable offence.

Maybe Sakura didn’t know a lot about the law, but she sure knew what _indictable_ meant.

And someone was missing.

Oh, this couldn’t possibly be good.

She gnawed her bottom lip. Her concerns could be mostly divided into three categories: firstly, that she should try her best not to incriminate her housemates since it was very likely that each of them had done something illegal recently; secondly, that her housemates might have something to do with somebody going mysteriously _missing_ ; and thirdly, that Sakura herself might somehow end up in legal trouble by association.

Honestly, he third point was making the most consistent contribution to her concern.

Calmly, and rather looking rather bored, the officer explained the powers granted to police by the warrant, which seemed a little frightening to Sakura. Seizing things as evidence and taking photographs, sure, but she went on to cover digging up the back and front yards as necessary, detaining anybody on the premises, searching anybody on the premises...

Sakura frowned, mind ticking over this information. Slowly, she handed the papers back to the man. “Can we find out what ‘sworn information’ was used to make this?” she asked.

“Usually you’d have to check the records,” he drawled, “but I can tell you now: the missing person’s car is outside your house, and he was living here until about two months ago when he was reported missing.”

That manky old thing Deidara was driving was a missing guy’s car?

Sakura rubbed the bridge of her nose. Of _course_ it was.

...her housemates’ ex-housemate was missing. The one who hadn’t paid his rent.

Previously living with Kakuzu.

Hadn’t paid his rent.

Missing.

Sakura felt distantly that she should be more shocked and upset about the idea that her housemates might have murdered somebody, since that was clearly what this investigation was driving at.

She really wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea that one of her housemates, best bet Hidan or Kakuzu, had probably murdered their last housemate. She should have been completely freaked out by the idea.

But mostly she just wanted to go to bed and contemplate how the man she had such a giant, stupid crush on had a boyfriend.

Probably a really hot boyfriend. Man, Itachi was basically the most attractive person she’d ever met in real life. He was probably way better at picking up guys than Sakura was.

“Asuma,” said a woman’s cool voice from somewhere deeper in the house.

Police. Right.

The tall officer - Asuma, apparently - herded Sakura into the infrequently-used living room off one side of the corridor, where she found roughly the amount of chaos she’d expected.

Hidan had a split lip and a murderous glower, but he was also sitting handcuffed on the floor. He looked at Sakura like this was somehow all her fault, an expression she ignored in favour of not caring about his temper tantrums. Sasori was sitting on their couch with Kakuzu perched on the backrest of it. There was room to sit on either side of the tiny redhead, but the tension in the room and the glazed, bored look in Sasori’s eyes easily convinced Sakura not to do that.

Deidara sat on the floor, long legs sprawled out in front of him. He didn’t look any the worse for wear, but he didn’t look happy. His eyes flicked over Sakura and her tall capturer as she was prodded into the room.

The tension didn’t drop, but nobody moved or started yelling. Good, thought Sakura. As long as nobody managed to physically attack the police - _again_ , because of course Hidan had taken a swing at one of them - this could still end okay.

Since moving in, Sakura’s standards for civil interaction had kind of... _dipped_.

There was another officer in the room, a woman with a straight back and a tumble of dust-brown hair. Her eyes were a strange, dark red colour and she was extremely pretty. Sakura thought that being attractive was probably an inconvenient thing for a lady police officer.

She looked over at Sakura and Asuma, but mostly her gaze was fixed on Hidan. She eyed Hidan like she knew him - like he’d had a previous life as something she’d found stuck to the sole of her shoe. Sakura couldn’t help but feel a sting of indignation. Sure, Hidan was a psychopath, but that didn’t mean other people could just go around _treating_ him like a psychopath.

“We have the authority to conduct a personal search of anybody on the premises while we search the place,” she said with her watchful gaze still trained on Hidan.

Hidan spat at her feet. Her eyes didn’t even flicker, but her hand drifted toward her taser.

“All right,” Asuma said, heaving a put-upon sigh. “The rest have been done,” he said to Sakura, prodding her into the middle of the room where his partner could keep an eye on her while he was busy performing the search. “Sakura-san, was it? I’ll need you to turn around. Hands on your head, legs spread, fingers interlaced - I’m sure you know the drill.”

Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. “I don’t, actually,” she said, hesitating uncertainly.

He gave her a look that said he wasn’t buying it, and that he was irritated by her being obstructive. “Turn around,” he said.

She did.

Everybody watched her. Even Hidan’s bright, angry eyes were fixed on her. She swallowed a little nervously.

Sakura followed the officer’s instructions but she really didn’t like the heavy, overbearing warmth of the man when he came to stand behind her. He felt huge and close and threatening - and in her position, poorly balanced on her feet with her hands jammed behind her head, she felt very vulnerable. One of his huge hands took a grip on both a sizeable lock of her hair and her joined hands, and he squeezed until the pressure on her interlocked fingers was just this side of painful.

“Spread your legs further,” he said, sounding bored, if anything.

She felt her face heat, not so much because of the situation - more just because of the _sound_ of the words. _Spread your legs further_. She felt unwilling, faintly dirty. Angry. Disgusted. Resentful. She ground her teeth. She complied.

Aside from a few television arrests, Sakura had never actually witnessed a police search and was surprised and a little - okay, a lot - indignant at how thorough they were, even over her clothes. The huge bearded officer combed one-handed through her hair, checked behind her ears, peered under her clothes, ran his hand down her sides...

Asuma’s fingers ran carefully over the outside edges of her bra. Sakura jerked and yelped. “Eeek!”

He went tense at the noise, which yanked on her hair, forcing her neck into an uncomfortable position. She blinked several times and swallowed before she started breathing again. From the corner of her eye she could see his partner uncoil from where she’d been ready to intervene, her hands hovering nearer her weapon. Sakura exhaled slowly.

Calm. She resolved to stay silent and still as much as possible.

There was silence for a heartbeat. Asuma swapped hands so he could reach her other side. She _really_ didn’t like him poking at the underwire of her bra through her clothing, even if it made logical sense in the context of a search.

“Is somebody recording this?” Deidara asked when the huge officer was skimming his hands over the waistband of her pants, feeling down her legs.

Sakura couldn’t see the blond’s face, but his voice didn’t sound very impressed. “There’s a lady officer right there, yeah.”

“Yes,” said Kakuzu.

Great, thought Sakura, that was just what she’d always wanted. Video footage of her being felt up by a police officer on Kakuzu’s phone.

“The search is legal,” said the lady officer, sounding unconcerned.

Her partner’s hand skimmed over the insides of Sakura’s thighs, and the back of his hand rubbed way too intimately against her groin.

“Legal, but not very professional, yeah,” said Deidara flatly.

“Just shut up. Don’t even fucking bother,” hissed Hidan. Sakura was glad she couldn’t see his face, because his voice was scary enough. He sounded positively unhinged. “Pigs won’t give a damn.”

“Mmm. I can think of somebody who will,” said Kakuzu. Of all of them, he sounded calm.

“Him? He’s an asshole,” growled Hidan.

“He’s a lawyer,” drawled Deidara. “It comes with the territory.”

“You’re done,” said Asuma, finally. He patted Sakura very gently on the head and set her free.

Sakura paused, standing there stupidly for a second. She felt like she could still feel the rough, warm impressions of his big hands on her with their unwelcome heat seeping through her clothes.

Then she moved, walking stiffly, intending to get herself as far away as possible - but Deidara caught her by the wrist as she passed. She tensed and turned wide eyes on him. After a second she relaxed.

They looked at each other for a second. Deidara’s eyes were very blue, dark and warm and sympathetic.

He tugged her down to the floor next to him. Sakura let him. She felt weirdly safe tucked into the curl of his arm. It was strange that he could be so savagely violent with her other housemates - except perhaps Sasori, who he rather liked - and yet here, so close and cozy, she felt completely safe from his mercurial temper.

That was probably a mistake, she thought dubiously. But she’d take advantage of it while she could.

The officers conferred for a moment. The search itself was messy and violating but not nearly as bad as the personal search had been, in Sakura’s opinion. The officers pulled out drawers and tipped them upside down, opened everything, checked under everything, and peered inside a couple of places Sakura hadn’t even paid attention to.

But after all that mess, Sakura was frankly astonished at how little the police officers actually found. There was some brief commotion about evidence of blood in Hidan’s room, and some of his things were seized.

He didn’t seem to appreciate the police confiscating his sacrificial knife, if his bellowing of “Do you know how many fucking animals I’m going to have to kill to consecrate that after it’s been in your heathen fucking hands?” was any indication.

“Relax," said the cigarette-smelling man, smacking a receipt for the knife onto Hidan’s forehead. “If it’s really used on animals only, you can get it back and go back to slaughtering defenceless baby lambs to your heart’s content.”

Apparently as long as the blood that turned up was goat blood instead of human blood, it was actually not illegal.

Sakura had not expected that.

“Er... really?” Sakura whispered to Deidara over the sound of Hidan yelling at the police. He was still handcuffed.

Deidara nodded. “If you kill an animal by cutting its throat properly it’s not considered an inhumane death, yeah. And you can sacrifice animals for religious reasons. And, even if you couldn’t... he does eat the goats.”

Sakura scratched her head. “Huh.”

Happily, they didn’t take anything from Sakura’s room, although they did move all her things around and shove her bed over so they could see the shape of the scorch mark that was on her floorboards.

“It’s in the condition report,” she said shortly, glaring when the officer with the red eyes came back to the living room to ask her questions about the marks.

The other woman raised her eyebrows, said nothing, and went back to photograph the marks. Sakura sagged into Deidara’s side, and he tossed his arm back over her shoulder. She was too anxious to appreciate the feel of him radiating heat next to her for anything except the relative safety it provided.

She noticed Kakuzu giving her a long, speculative look, but she was determined to ignore it. Subsequently she missed the glance he shared with Sasori.

The officers took away a good chunk the art supplies in Deidara’s room - although they looked to Sakura just like the bits and pieces he used to experiment with glazes and things. He watched them with an expression she’d never seen on his face before, with something sharp and cool flickering behind his eyes.

When the pair finally - _finally_ \- left, looking weary and kind of vaguely disappointed but not surprised, the house had been turned upside down. Nothing was actually broken, but things were strewn everywhere, furniture moved, drawers pulled out and upended on floors and tables.

The door closed behind them. Everybody - even Hidan - was still for a moment, listening to the sounds of footsteps and car doors slamming.

Sakura looked around at the wreckage and wasn’t thrilled.

The urge to get up and clean didn’t come to her, though. Nor, apparently, to anybody else. Not even Sasori, who could be so possessive about his things it had come full circle and become funny again.

Next to her, Deidara heaved a sigh and leaned heavily against her. Where before he’d been a comforting support, now he was a dead weight sagging against her shoulder. She nudged him until he slumped to her lap, where he wriggled until he was laid out on the floor with his head on her thighs.

“Fuck,” growled Hidan, slumping onto the couch next to Sasori. The redhead’s eyes flicked to him, but he didn’t say anything. Hidan rubbed his wrists, scowling angrily.

Everybody looked like they’d had the energy sapped out of them. Sakura contemplated cooking dinner, cleaning up, studying... the thought of that much effort made her want to groan aloud. She contemplated the coupons hiding in her wallet.

Sakura looked down at Deidara’s face. “Pizza?”

“Broke,” he admitted. He looked tired and -- upset, she supposed. It stood to reason.

Kakuzu snorted. “When are you not?”

Sakura didn’t give Kakuzu the evil eye that she wanted to. They were all tired and irritated and dreading the thought of cleaning up everything that had been left in such a giant mess. She hummed quietly, counting up how much money she could spare in her head. Not a lot, that was for sure - none of them could, except maybe Kakuzu, who wouldn’t.

Since he was there anyway, she buried her fingers in Deidara’s hair. She’d never really touched it on purpose before, but she was a little shocked by the incredible, ridiculous softness of it.

She probably had enough money, just. “I’ll buy,” she said, scratching his scalp idly. After a second she found exactly how much pressure she needed to make his eyelids flutter. He was right there and it pleased her to make him feel good, on some gut-deep level that she refused to analyse right now.

She fished her phone out of her bag and looked up the pizza place for which her coupon guaranteed her free delivery and 30% off her order.

“Free pizza?” she said, looking around the room, her fingers hovering over the touch screen of her phone. “Speak now.”

Unsurprisingly, Kakuzu and Hidan jumped at the opportunity - Kakuzu because saving money on dinner was a good proposition, Hidan mostly because he liked being a pain in the butt to other people and mooching whenever possible was an A-grade way to do it. Even less surprising was the fact that somehow an argument broke out over this, because enjoying other people’s suffering was a morally better motive than saving money or something. Sasori watched on, looking like he was so bored he might just slip into a coma.

“Ohh,” said Deidara, who had a very indirect view of her phone’s backlit screen from where his head was in her lap. “Is that the place down on Smith Street? Uh... With the stupid bright logo? I’ve been there, yeah. They do weird fancy stuff.”

“Salami Hut,” she said, eyeing her coupon.

“Salami... Hut?” he snorted. “Is that what it’s called?”

“Yep," she agreed, uncertain whether she should cringe or applaud.

“They have one that’s got caramelised onions and cheese and stuff. I want that one, yeah.”

“Okay,” she shrugged. She looked around. The place was a mess. Kakuzu and Hidan were still arguing. Or, well, Hidan was arguing - Kakuzu was slamming his face into a table, which didn’t seem to affect his capacity to argue and swear. Sakura sighed.

They ended up ordering a kind of strange assortment of pizza. The thing Deidara seemed to have remembered from some two-am drunken stopover was actually a fancy modern variation that combined a weird, rustic-looking pizza base with napoli, mozzarella, blue cheese, tiny slices of flavourful chicken, caremalised onion, pear and rocket.

“Those things don’t sound like they go together,” Sakura commented, eyeing the entry on the menu that she could see on the screen of her phone.

“It was amazing, yeah. Almost art.”

“Pizza does tend to be ephemeral and fleeting, yes,” Sakura admitted, a little drily. She didn’t stop her hand moving through his hair. Deidara smiled serenely.

Kakuzu, more or less as expected, chose to get the only thing on the menu with expensive seafood in it, which included big curled prawns, slices of fatty pancetta, little rings of red onion, cheeses and a heavy dose of chilli. Sakura could admit that it probably tasted really good, but so would a lot of things - a lot of _cheaper_ things.

“Really?” she muttered. His lips curved, just the tiniest bit, pulling at his scars and Sakura just sighed and told the attendant his order.

Sasori eyed the menu on her phone for a few seconds, and then asked for a pizza that involved banana slices, maple syrup, toasted walnuts and a heap of marscapone.

Sakura very neutrally reported this selection to the person on the phone, who didn’t seem at all fazed by it. “Sure,” he said, and she could hear him tapping on something.

Hidan had escaped from Kakuzu’s punishing grip and was now making grabby hands at her phone, despite the bloody nose. “Ah, hangon,” she said, “my housemate wants to tell you his -- Hey!”

She swiped at Hidan, but he danced out of the way and she couldn’t manage an effective lunge with Deidara sprawled across her lap like a giant housecat. He didn’t seem especially inclined to go anywhere, either.

She rolled her eyes as Hidan yelled at the confused man on the other end until he’d agreed that the pizza shop could indeed make the pizza exactly how Hidan wanted it, which turned out to be with tomato, olives, anchovies, garlic, chilli and capers. And nothing else. Sakura wrinkled her nose at the idea and wondered if that wasn’t transgressing some kind of law about how much salt could be in any given meal.

“What d’you want?” he asked Sakura, still holding the phone tightly. He leaned in much too close, and Sakura realised that what she’d thought was a nose bleed was actually coming from his mouth where he’d bitten into his lip. It was bleeding pretty freely.

“Margherita,” she said, peering closer at his mouth. Her hand stilled in Deidara’s hair.

“Isn’t that just tomato and cheese?” he said, looking at her blankly.

“There’s other stuff,” she said defensively.

He rolled his eyes and repeated her order back to the attendant before rattling off their address and hanging up. “That’s boring,” he informed her.

Sakura took her phone back, wiped an errant fleck of blood from its screen and tucked it away.

Assured now that her offer of free pizza had granted her a captive audience - at least until it arrived - she fixed the men with a hard look. “You know what’s _not_ boring?” she asked in a flat voice.

Deidara made a noise and rolled his head in her lap to look at her. “What?”

“What’s _not_ boring would be, I think, the explanation for what the police were doing here in the first place.”

Deidara’s huge blue eyes blinked up at her and she flicked him in the forehead, hard. He didn't even flinch. “What’s this about you driving around in a missing guy’s car? What the hell happened to your last housemate?”

“Ah...” said Dediara.

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes...” Hidan bitched, turning away to run his hands through his hair. He dragged a layer of blood through it and Sakura resisted the urge to scream at him to _put some goddamned pressure on that bleeding._

Sasori got up and wandered into the kitchen to make more coffee. (Deidara’s theory, revealed privately to Sakura, was that he needed a constant supply so he didn’t pass out and finally catch up on the many years of sleep he’d missed, rendering him comatose for weeks.)

“Yes,” said a new voice, loud and sudden. “What were the police doing here?”

The whole group flinched at the new voice. Nobody had heard his entry. Sakura craned her neck toward the doorway.

“...Pein-san?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Notes: 
> 
> One: while the police stuff is based in fact, I have taken some liberties. This is fiction, it isn't a reference.
> 
> Two: I had an assignment due. It took a while, but it's over now. So this chapter's a little rushed and probably a bit schizophrenic-feeling given the sudden changes in tone etc., but I wanted to post one so people had a thing to read. 
> 
> Lastly: comments always appreciated! :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura is confused, pornography is discussed and Kisame is huge.

 

It was Pein. Sakura wasn’t sure if he’d gotten in because the police had left the door open or because he had a key. He looked unimpressed.

Which was frankly ridiculous, because he had no right.

 _Sakura_ was unimpressed.

“Okay,” said Sakura flatly, turning toward him. “Now I want to know what _you’re_ doing here.”

Pein ’s strange ringed eyes flicked to her and then back to the other men. He didn’t look or seem any more intimidating than he had at the cafe, but the fact that Hidan and Kakuzu both stilled and turned toward his voice hinted at a certain level of authority.

“Sakura-san. You live here too, now, don’t you?” He looked contemplative for a second and his brow furrowed. “I suppose it can’t be helped,” he said finally.

That didn’t answer her question - any of them! Sakura ground her teeth. “ _What_ can’t be helped?” she growled. She could feel her muscles tensing up under her skin. “What were the police doing here? What do you all have to do with a missing person?” her voice got louder and louder at each successive question.

Pein held up one hand for silence. She closed her mouth with a click, grudgingly obedient. “I understand your concerns - however, everybody should be gathered for this. Although there’s the risk of surveillance, apparently,” he said, sweeping his eyes over the mess the officers had made of the room. He pulled out his phone and fired off a quick text.

“We convene at TRIVIA in an hour,” he said flatly. “Sakura-san, you can come with me now.”

It was decidedly _not_ a request.

Sakura was not at all certain she wanted to follow him. She hesitated. Around her, all of the other men went tense - except Hidan, who looked at her with a lazy smile.

“So that’s how it is?” she said, glancing around at them.

It probably wasn’t a good time to dig her heels in. They were all bigger and more dangerous than she was, and she suspected that Pein’s word was motivation enough for them to hurt her.

That... stung, a little.

She’d thought Deidara, at least...

“It’s nothing personal,” said Sasori as he ghosted back into the room, clutching a giant cup of foul instant coffee. “It would be counterproductive to take offence.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” she said, giving him a dark look.

He was unmoved.

“Fine.” She picked up her bag and slung it over one shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said to Pein.

The men all relaxed, just a little. Sakura followed Pein toward the door.

“You!” she added suddenly, spinning on her heel just as she was about to leave. Her finger was levelled directly at Deidara. “Make sure you save me some pizza.”

Kakuzu made a vaguely derisive sound, but Deidara shot her an uncertain smile and saluted with one hand.

Nothing personal.

Sure.

“Come.” Then Pein grabbed her wrist and drew her out the door.

 

* * *

 

 

When the doors of Pein’s car closed they were alone together.

Sakura felt very uncertain. She found herself fiddling with the hem of her shirt, quick and nervous.

For a few long moments everything was absolutely silent. Pein pulled away from the curb, and Sakura felt like she could hear the rumble and tick of every bit of machinery inside the car.

“The police search was about a missing person?” Pein prompted finally. His voice drowned out the maddening tick of his indicator as they waited for a set of lights. He was at least more competent as a driver than Deidara, which said something for his life expectancy.

“Yes.” Sakura nodded. She felt absurdly grateful for even this conversation. “Their last house mate?”

He nodded. “Gekkou-san, yes. Hmm.” He was quiet for a few long moments. “I’m not sure that the search had anything to do with Gekkou-san, to be honest, but it is a good front for them.”

“What else could it be for?” Sakura asked, uncertain as to whether or not she actually wanted to know.

Pein was silent for so long she thought he might have just been ignoring her. “You were aware last week that Hidan had been injured,” he said finally.

She made a noise of assent.

“His injury was the result of an argument between several ...factions. This has had the unwanted side effect of increased police attention focused on certain activities. It wouldn’t be such an issue, but there’s the election coming up,” he added thoughtfully.

“So...” said Sakura, drawing the word out long and feeling like she was very slow for only just catching on, “you’re all in a gang.”

He didn’t answer.

“I see,” she said anyway, contemplating.

She _did_ see, and Sakura wasn’t entirely certain that she liked the view. Hidan’s injury. The mysterious deliveries to TRIVIA. Zetsu’s cryptic comments about 'the work they do’. She rubbed her forehead.

Her housemates were all part of some terrible, secret, underground criminal empire.

God.

Her eyes moved from the road to Pein and back again, almost non-stop. She felt kind of queasy.

They pulled up a good kilometre from TRIVIA, and Pein guided Sakura to a nondescript door with “FIRE HYDRANT AND HOSE REEL” written on it in peeling letters.

Its hinges protested. Inside, steps led down. It was very dark.

Pein held the door open for her and made her go first. She supposed that was fair. A smart person _would_ run away.

When they reached flat ground, there were breaks in the walls - pathways that led elsewhere. But there was still no light, and Sakura couldn’t tell where they were going at all. Pein seemed to have some way of keeping track.

“What are you going to do if there’s actually a fire?” she asked curiously, feeling out the wall to one side with her hand. There was, after all, no fire hydrant or hose reel behind that door.

“Feign surprise,” he responded. “Turn here,” he added, pressing down on her shoulder with one warm hand.

Sakura did her best not to flinch at the sudden contact and turned obediently. “They have officials who have to test those things,” she pointed out. “There’d be an investigation.”

“No,” said a smug, confident voice from ahead, bleeding out of the darkness, “there wouldn’t.”

She knew that voice.

Her skin shivered.

Sakura swallowed.

“I thought I might be seeing you here before long,” Madara mused. There was no light, but Sakura swore she could see the red glint in his eyes, glittering out at her.

Did he just make a habit of lurking around after dark, waiting to step out of the shadows and intimidate random people? Was that, like, some kind of hobby for him?

“Uchiha-san,” she said in a voice that sounded detached and calm. Good. She didn’t feel very _connected_ to that voice, but she was glad it was so steady.

A door swung open to reveal a paler patch of shadow in the darkness underground, and Pein disappeared inside.

“Call me Madara,” murmured that too-familiar voice. It was a lot closer now, and Sakura still couldn’t see -- and then his hand was on the back of her neck, strong fingers tense under her short hair.

The noise she made could, loosely, have been considered assent.

Mostly it was just a stupid whimper.

Sakura licked her lips.

Madara propelled her forward. The door swung shut behind them.

The room was tiny and very cold, but after a few seconds in the dark there was a creak and a thud. Then they swiftly climbed a ladder and...

...emerged into the store room of TRIVIA.

Because there was a trap door in the floor. Apparently.

Huh.

How had she not noticed that before?

“It’s usually covered,” said Pein placidly, apparently picking up on her unspoken question.

There was a light glowing from somewhere in the cafe proper and Sakura could hear the sounds of somebody banging around. The air smelled like coffee grounds and buttery pastry.

They headed out to the tiny kitchen area and Sakura was surprised to find that it was Konan messing around with croissants and sipping on a short black. Leaning on the counter, smiling rakishly at her, was Jiraiya, whose unruly tumble of hair was tossed over one shoulder carelessly.

“Sakura-chan!” he said, much too familiarly, with his eyes crinkling into a pleased smile when he looked her over. “Heard you had a bit of a run in with the police this afternoon. No worse for wear, ne?”

“That remains to be seen,” said Pein.

The statement had the effect of making Sakura feel like she’d been dunked in ice water. No matter how sucky the evening had already been, Pein’s empty, factual voice reminded her that any situation, no matter how bad, could get worse.

Jiraiya handwaved this ominous comment with the same laissez-faire attitude he displayed about pretty much everything and swiftly pulled Sakura away to discuss - at length - how awesome Icha Icha Tactics was.

Konan glanced over at this discussion and then made her way back toward Pein as though she was quite determined to pretend she didn’t know either of them.

That was all right. Icha Icha Tactics was awesome. Even if Konan didn’t know it. Or Pein. Or, actually, given the supercilious gleam in his eye, Madara.

Whatever. Clearly they hadn’t read it.

It was true that Jiraiya was absolutely a complete pervert. Maybe the books he wrote weren’t technically pornography, but only because he cleverly (and thinly) disguised them with plot.

“Well, of course,” he said when she pointed this out. He scratched his chin for a moment. “I’m a romantic at heart,” he confided with a smile that was pretty much the opposite of romantic, “so it needs a good story! Mystery and sin and salvation and high drama and - and -” he seemed lost for a moment.

“Boobs?” Sakura prompted.

“ _Boobs_ ,” he agreed dreamily.

There were a lot of boobs in Icha Icha Tactics.

“But also you can’t legally sell it if it’s just porn,” he said prosaically, and shrugged. “Which would be fine, but then you have to find a publisher who’ll have it made anyway or take the risk of vanity publishing it, which is a big hit to a reputation in the industry...” he shrugged. “For those reasons, among others, even if you export it to places with different laws, there’s not much legal profit in home-grown pornography.”

“...Huh,” said Sakura.

“Although that’s just literature and magazines, real old-school stuff. Modern technology is very different.”

“You sound very knowledgeable,” Sakura said slowly.

Jiraiya’s grin was a terrible thing to behold. “ _Very_ knowledgeable,” he promised.

“A... aah,” Sakura agreed, feeling abruptly a little out of her depth.

Whatever else Jiraiya was, he was at the very least distracting: while Sakura was excitedly discussing his novel and floundering about trying not to feel embarrassed when he spoke of actual pornography, she wasn’t thinking about how she’d been whisked away from her home to some kind of gang-wide meeting via a secret underground passageway.

Others arrived in a steady trickle, some from the back and some from underground. Sasori appeared, somehow, without noise or notice, perched on a crate in one shadowed corner. Sakura only actually noticed him when Pein broke away from his chatter with Konan to make the redhead a coffee.

Deidara and Hidan came up from the store room, shoving and bitching at each other, with Kakuzu trailing behind in a heavy, long-suffering silence.

Tobi arrived via the rolling metal front door, which scraped open with a hideous noise. “I’m here for the super secret hush-hush meeting right out in the open~” he told them all, beaming.  
Deidara hauled him inside by his hair to a chorus of sad little whines and yelps, and Madara laughed his deep, hearty laugh. The door was shoved back down after him.

He pouted at Deidara as though he’d ruined Christmas. Then, a second later, he clapped his hands. “I know what will make Deidara-sempai happy!” he declared and then rummaged around in his bag before producing a bouquet of bright orange toffee apples.

Sakura felt sure that the overall size and shape of the apples meant they should not have fit inside his bag, but when she found him thrusting one of the sticks at her she took it graciously. “Did you make it, Tobi-san?” she asked, examining the apple.

He nodded cheerfully.

It tasted very sweet and cracked satisfyingly when she nibbled at it. She noticed she was the only one who even tried hers, which made her wonder if there was something wrong with them - but it tasted fine, and she liked candy.

Itachi arrived not long after, picking his way delicately through the chaos and leading literally the hugest person Sakura had ever seen.

He was huge. Taller than Kakuzu. It didn’t really help that he was huge across the chest and shoulders. There was a distinct air of _rippling_ to him.

Also he was _blue_ , but that actually took a backseat to the sheer physical presence of him for about thirty seconds.

Politely, Itachi said, “Sakura, this is Hoshigaki Kisame.”

That made her look back. She had been expecting Itachi’s boyfriend to be, well, _gay_ -looking, to seem effete and trendy with a side order of bitch and gossip.

She hadn’t expected somebody quite so... masculine.

“It’s good to meet you,” she said politely, more or less on rote, because her brain was still trying to fire properly.

Sakura had the unsettling impression that the man’s quads were bigger than her _rib cage_.

It occurred to Sakura that Itachi was, being gay, probably just as attracted to masculinity as any straight girl might be.

Looking at Hoshigaki, she concluded that Itachi was really, _really_ gay.

Kisame smiled.

“...Your teeth are filed to points,” she said dazedly. She swallowed.

“Bet you’re regretting asking my boyfriend out right now,” he said, grinning wider.

“Um,” she said.

“Kisame,” Itachi murmured softly. If she hadn’t been paying such obsessively close attention to him for weeks, Sakura would never have heard the sliver of reproach in his tone.

Hoshigaki heard it too, because he reached out - and _down_ \- and patted Sakura gently on the head. “I empathise with your motives and I forgive you. This time,” he added, eyeing her.

He had a very long way down to peer. His eyes were strangely pale, but Sakura supposed that once you got past the blue skin and the sharp teeth, he was actually not a bad-looking sort of man.

“I... didn’t know?” she said hesitantly.

Beside her, Jiraiya snorted. “You mean you _actually_ asked him out?” he said, and began laughing loudly.

“Are you frightening Sakura-san?” Deidara kind of just appeared, glowering at Hoshigaki over Sakura’s shoulder. Either he was feeling very brave, or very reckless.

Jiraiya was not recovered. “She - ” he gasped. “She asked Uchiha out!” And then he dissolved back into hysterics.

“What?” Deidara’s voice indicated that he did not, in fact, find this that hilarious.

“Why is that funny?” Tobi interrupted from right next to Sakura, a position she had definitely not seen him approach, “Itachi-nii is very handsome, isn’t he?”

“No!” Said Deidara, smacking him over the head.

“Yes,” said Hoshigaki. He looked to where Itachi had been, only to find that he had left while everybody was distracted and was now across the other side of the room with Sasori.

Sakura just covered her face with her hands. “Please stop laughing,” she said to Jiraiya, who ignored her. His laughter trailed off into occasional sniggers eventually anyway. “I really didn’t know he was dating Hoshigaki-san.”

“That’s not really what they’re laughing about,” said Kisame. There was a tiny smile tugging at his mouth. She was glad he’d stopped baring those giant teeth. “People usually think it’s obvious Itachi’s not into girls.”

“Oh,” said Sakura, peering out from between her fingers. He was so _big_. “I...”

“Yeah,” he said. “Obviously.”

She slid her fingers back together. If she ignored the chatter and laughter, she could just pretend she was in her bedroom with the lights out, right?

Except that made her think of her bedroom.

Her bedroom that was a giant mess because, oh, right, the police raided her house.

She dropped her hands.

Only to find herself blinking into Tobi’s face, which was very close.

“Sakura-chan, are you okay?”

“...are you really part of an underground criminal empire or something?” she asked plaintively.

It was Tobi. He was so... so...

 _Tobi_.

“Yep,” he said cheerfully.

“‘Empire’ might be a strong word for it,” mused Jiraiya, leaning back into his seat.

“Oh?” she prompted.

“It’s mostly a minor smuggling operation, really,” he shrugged. “But once you operate outside the law, competition can become more problematic than you’d think.”

“Gang fights,” Sakura summarised.

Jiraiya nodded seriously. “Territory disputes and supply line sabotage, mostly. There wasn’t any real base of operations for porn when we started bringing it in - not enough profit initially, and you know sourcing it was a giant organisational headache. But once we’d gotten started, our infrastructure was so good it seemed a shame not to broaden our horizons a little...”

“Drugs,” Sakura guessed dully. She really didn’t like the idea of smuggling drugs, and certainly not of _dealing_ drugs.

Jiraiya shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not really involved with that part of the operation,” he looked pointedly at Deidara.

“Drugs? Eh, sometimes, but not as often as you’d think,” Deidara said, hopping up to perch on the table and almost knocking over Sakura’s coffee in the process. “People - and police - get weird about recreational drugs, yeah?”

Sakura nodded slowly.

“There’s a lot of other stuff people aren’t paying nearly as much attention to.”

“Like what?” she challenged.

“Computer games!” Tobi said, beaming.

“...computer games,” Sakura echoed. That was... less exciting than she’d thought.

“Banned books and films,” Deidara added. “You know, seditious material, stuff that’s instructive about drugs or suicide, yeah.”

“The Anarchist’s Cookbook is Tobi’s favourite,” he informed her solemnly.

Right.

“Those aren’t the things that really cause problems,” Kisame clarified, looking curiously between Tobi and Deidara. “There’s more competition over the weapons, tobacco, cadavers, alcohol and chemicals.”

“Hang on,” said Sakura, “cigarettes and alcohol are legal, aren’t they?”

“But they’re taxed heavily to discourage people from using them,” explained Jiraiya. “You can undercut the whole market by smuggling them over the borders and avoiding the taxes. It can be a very profitable business.”

“They’re late,” declared Madara, causing everybody to fall abruptly silent.

As far as Sakura could tell, Pein was nominally in charge. But Madara...

He spoke, and everybody listened.

She didn’t know quite what to make of that.

Pein looked around. “I can fill them in when they arrive,” he conceded. “Is everybody more or less familiar with Sakura-san?”

Eyes all settled on her and Sakura swallowed.

“She will be working with us from now on,” Pein went on.

“I will?” Sakura asked. Then she scowled. “You can’t just - mmmmphhh!” She broke off as Deidara slapped his hand over her mouth.

“She says she’s thrilled, yeah,” he said, beaming at Pein, whose expression never changed. “Do you really want to talk about the alternative?” he hissed into Sakura’s ear.

She shifted her eyes to the blond hair tickling the side of her face.

She probably didn’t want to discuss any alternatives, no. Did that mean this was a do-or-die sort of situation? She wasn’t sure she wanted to belong to a violent gang.

She’d have to wait and see.

Sakura exhaled into his hand. He twitched, but didn’t release her.

“She is adept at basic first aid, so on-job injuries should be assessed by her before you seek outside medical help, except in circumstances where you really can’t avoid presenting at a hospital.”

Sakura stiffened. Basic first aid was _not_ a replacement for competent medical treatment!

“Shh,” said Deidara warningly.

She made a grunting noise of assent and he slowly took his hand away from her mouth.

“Now,” Pein went on. “Itachi-kun, the search?”

Itachi stood up from where he was seated in the shadowy corner next to Sasori. “Tonight there was a police search on the share house,” he said. Only Tobi seemed remotely surprised by this, and he responded by dramatically covering his mouth with one hand and whimpering. Everybody ignored him. “Ostensibly the search was prompted by Gekkou-san’s car, which remains in use by members of that household.”

Everybody looked at Deidara.

He shrugged. “It’s not my fault he left his car, yeah,” he said, looking vastly unconcerned.

Pein’s blank expression became vastly blanker.

“Besides,” Deidara added, scrunching up his nose. “I thought he was missing? Did they decide he was dead after all?”

“Hang on, so,” said Sakura. It was simultaneously intimidating and gratifying to receive their combined attention when she spoke. “To clarify: nobody actually _killed_ this guy?”

Sasori lifted one shoulder in a kind of half-arsed shrug. “Until they find a body, he’s missing, not dead.”

Sakura did notice that he had not actually answered her question. Her eyes drifted from face to face. They looked weary and irritated, some of them curious, but none especially guilty - but then, all of them were hard to read when they wanted to be. Finally she looked at Hidan.

He would tell her the truth, she knew. Hidan was a savage and a cheater and a crazy person, but he didn’t lie.

He met her gaze and raised his eyebrows.

There was a second’s silence, and then Sakura looked away. She didn’t ask. She might have been almost unbearably curious, but for her own sake... well, she probably didn’t really want to know.

“Thought so.” Hidan snorted back a laugh. Kakuzu smacked him over the head and deftly dodged the returned swipe. “Shut up,” he growled. “She’s a smart woman.”

“Itachi-san,” Pein prompted.

“I can confirm that the point of the search was not the missing person or the car; these were an excuse to have access to the premises. As you know, any evidence found in the course of a police search that indicates a crime is permissable.”

“How does he know that?” Sakura mumbled to Deidara.

Evidently she was not as quiet as she’d thought because Kakuzu grunted. “Itachi-san’s family work almost universally in the criminal justice system: policy-makers, lawyers, police officers, judges and so on,” he explained.

“Itachi collects gossip,” clarified Deidara cheerfully.

Sakura kind of thought that ‘collecting gossip’ sounded like a task Deidara would be better qualified for, since as far as she could tell Itachi - beautiful, competent, polite Itachi - had all the actual social skills of a badly concussed _rock_.

“Hypothetically,” she said, “what might they _actually_ have been searching for?”

Nobody bothered to answer her this time.

“Give me the receipts for what was confiscated,” Pein demanded, holding his hand out. Quickly a pile of little papers were set in his hand. They were basically glorified ticket stubs: they entitled the bearer to receive the confiscated item listed from the police at some nebulous future date, provided it wasn’t needed for evidence.

Pein examined the papers, counting and cataloguing what had or hadn’t been taken. Finally he nodded. “The two we’re missing can add their reports to this when they arrive,” he decided. “Hidan, will they find any human blood on the confiscated weapon?”

“ _Sacrificial knife_ ,” he corrected. “And, yeah, they’ll find _my_ blood.”

“I don’t think anybody’d lose sleep over that,” said Kisame in a low voice. Sakura glanced at him, then at Hidan. He was probably right.

There was a little more back and forth following that: discussions about supply routes and where their routines could be changed up to make them less predictable. A couple of really dubious-sounding assignments were dished out and Itachi reported some information that Sakura felt sure ought not to be available to the general public.

“Was there anything else?” Pein asked, glancing around.

“How do you know I’m not going to run and tell the police about all of this?” Sakura asked.

Konan stepped forward. “Are you going to run and tell the police about all of this?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Sakura said, and realised with a flash of dread that she was being honest. She really wouldn’t turn them in - because their victims were nameless and faceless and she knew these people.

Konan gave her a faint smile, as if to say ‘See?’

They split up then - Madara had a show to get to, where presumably he would spend a really unnecessary amount of time pulling small, brightly-coloured birds out of strange places. Sakura really didn’t have much idea what a stage magician did.

His parting comment that he had a busy schedule of sawing young women in half didn’t make her feel all that secure, though.

All this left Sakura feeling horribly drained. When Pein eventually dropped her back at her home she was just reminded that there was an enormous mess to clean up.

“Maybe it can wait until tomorrow,” she suggested, looking around at the chaos.

Deidara nudged her shoulder with his. “This can _definitely_ wait until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day,” he said cheerfully. “Come on, I saved your pizza, yeah,” he added.

 

* * *

 

  
<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 11:45 PM  
Message body: there is no facet of life that cannot be improved with pizza. >

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 11:47 PM  
Message body: You and your freak metabolism. I hope it goes to your thighs. >

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura tries to sort this mess out in her head, explosives happen and a bed is occupied.

That night was a late one, even though Sakura locked her door and stayed well away from her housemates. She took her box of cold pizza to bed with her. The pizza was salty, the commercially-produced tomato paste oversweetened, and the cooling animal fat was strangely satisfying.

Feeling resentful, and rather as though she deserved this slovenly indulgence, she ate it while wrapped up in a blanket burrito.

It was hard not to feel a little sorry for herself. She tried to pinpoint precisely when she’d lost all control of her life, but she couldn’t. Even before moving in with her current housemates - who turned out to _all_ be criminals, and, god, no wonder the rent was so bloody cheap - she’d been staying at the Nekketsu Dojo. She certainly hadn’t been in control of her life then!

Maybe not even since she’d smacked into Itachi back at high school.

Ugh.

Sakura closed the box and shoved the rest of her pizza away. Then she sank down into her blankets. She’d clean up tomorrow.

Of course, when Sakura woke, it was Saturday and she was very nearly late for her shift at TRIVIA. She tripped over her discarded pizza box when she was stumbling out of bed, then skipped her morning shower, skipped breakfast, dashed to the bus, scrambled aboard and somehow ended up right on time.

Konan and Pein were both there to open the shop, despite that they must have had just as late a night as she had. They welcomed Sakura’s company like they hadn’t all been up to shady gang business just last night. She really didn’t know how to deal with that.

Sakura felt her eyes darting between the two of them during her shift, but she took her cue from them: they didn’t bring it up, so she wouldn’t bring it up. Pein examined her with his strange eyes for most of the morning, and then at ten he took three dirty plates out of her hands and replaced them in her hands with a latte, which was topped with crazy-looking abstract swirls.

Sakura blinked at him.

He gave her a tiny half-smile and went back to work.

She drank her coffee and felt marginally better.

Ten o’clock was also about the time that Sakura’s stomach started to make pitiful noises of want. The smells in the air of the cafe didn’t help - there was a banana, date and honey bread loaf that had become extremely popular for breakfasts, and every time one came out of the toaster (ready, of course, to be slathered with a generous pat of butter that quickly melted), Sakura felt her mouth fill with saliva.

Although the smells of toasting breakfast were always the strongest, there were other temptations. In the refrigerated case was a series of crusty rolls filled with smoked salmon and cress, topped with salt and pepper and lemon and a hit of horseradish. And Konan had somehow - _somehow_ \- found the time between secret criminal business and actually running the cafe to make a huge salad, with chickpeas and mint and basil, mixed with fresh tomatoes and crumbly feta cheese. Konan instructed her to give each serving a squeeze of lemon juice before taking it to customers.

Sakura looked upon all this bounty with a hideous covetousness, but she remained righteous. Hungry, but righteous. It helped that she had her whirling thoughts about the events of the previous night for company.

They filled her with an unpleasant jolt of anxiety whenever her mind drifted back to them. It was a lot like the feeling of missing a step and finding only air where you expected solid ground.

She didn’t know quite how to act around anybody anymore.

Sakura did her best not to dwell on these thoughts, at least not at work - Pein and Konan were right there, after all, and they would know exactly what was bothering her. She ran a beautiful little brioche bun with sliced figs and soft white cheese out to a haggard-looking postgrad student buried behind a pile of printouts and books, flashing him her best and brightest smile.

He blinked stupidly at her for a moment. “...Sakura-san?”

She blinked back. “Yamato-sempai?” She’d been so caught up in herself she hadn’t even recognised him. How long had that table been occupied? She thought she remembered bringing a coffee over almost two hours ago...

They stared at each other for a second.

“I didn’t realise you worked here,” he said, shifting a poorly photocopied page out of the way so she could set his lunch down.

“I only started a few weeks ago,” she said. She tried to figure out if she was happy or annoyed to see him, and after a few seconds she decided she was actually pretty pleased. She liked Yamato, for all that he usually came attached to Hatake Kakashi’s hip.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked brightly after that second’s awkward pause.

He shook his head, and she told him to enjoy his lunch and then turned to collect the dirty dishes from the recently vacated table next to him. She scanned the cafe for unattended customers before heading around the counter to do a quick-paced batch of washing up - mostly on auto-drive.

She couldn’t keep an eye on the doorway or her customers from her position at the sink because her back was toward that part of the cafe - but that was why Konan and Pein were there during the busiest hours.

“Saa, I didn’t know Student-san worked here,” drawled a voice that made Sakura twitch even before she recognised it.

She turned. “Kakashi-sensei,” she said in her most neutral tone, drying off her sudsy hands. Konan was busy talking to a customer and Pein was foaming milk for coffee, so she was definitely stuck dealing with her teacher.

Today Kakashi was wearing a bandanna over his mouth and nose and a white eyepatch with a henohenomoheji printed on it. It wasn’t nearly as subtle as the scarves he wore when he was teaching. (She used the word ‘teaching’ very loosely.)

She eyed his covered face and decided she didn’t want to know.

“Was there something I can get for you?”

Kakashi’s visible eye curved into a happy crescent. “Water,” he said.

Sakura poured him a glass of tap water and handed it over to him. “Was there anything else?”

“You’re not going to walk it over to my table for me?” he asked, giving her a very disappointed look.

She gave him her blandest face, but followed him back to Yamato’s table where she set his water down.

“Only two and a half hours late, Kakashi-sempai,” drawled Yamato.

Kakashi shrugged. “It’s fairly important to your thesis. I thought it would be best if we hurried along.”

That sounded about right. Sakura retreated behind her counter again.

“Friends?” Konan asked, putting something delicious-smelling onto a plate and glancing Kakashi and Yamato with sharp eyes.

“No,” said Sakura flatly. “A teacher,” she nodded toward Kakashi’s shock of old-man grey hair.

Konan’s eyebrows rose minutely. “He looks more like a bandit than a doctor.”

Sakura looked back over at him.

He _did_ , kind of. That bandanna across his face did him no favours.

“He teaches personal development and professional ethics and stuff,” Sakura said. “I don’t know if he’s actually a doctor.”

“Kakashi-sempai!" There was a brief, natural lull in the noise of the cafe, and over it they could both hear Yamato sputtering. “No, I will _not_ help you cheat on your ethics test! There’s a reason they have those requirements for your teachers’ registration!”

“What did you say he taught again?” Konan murmured. Her face was mostly smooth and blank, but there was a tiny curl to her mouth.

“Yep,” said Sakura, drawing the word out and popping the final consonant.

For a second she felt like everything was okay and she wasn’t quite sure what she felt anxious about - but then memory rose to the surface of her mind and she thought about how Konan was part of a group of violent smugglers. Ah, yes, that was where the anxiety was hiding.

Yamato left after a while, looking rather frustrated, but Kakashi hung around. He took up room on their back table, ordered nothing but water and spent his time reading Icha Icha (Icha Icha Pool, one of the spin-offs; Sakura had heard good things about it) in rapt silence - except when Sakura came to deliver his water, which was always met with an eye-crinkling smile and a wave.

After the second time she decided that he wasn’t going to order anything he’d actually have to pay for.

She did her level best to politely ignore him, even when she was at his table.

Even when he commented that he could hear her stomach growling.

At the end of her shift, Konan gave her a roll filled with softened butter, dijon mustard, thick ham slices, slivers of apple and a generous amount of sliced brie cheese. It wasn’t on the menu - it appeared to be made of leftovers from the other foods, actually - but it was pretty good. She devoured it with a terrible ferocity.

“Don’t think too hard,” Konan advised, pressing one deft hand to Sakura’s shoulder.

Sakura swallowed. “I...”

“Also,” she added, looking flustered for the first time Sakura had ever witnessed, which was strangely charming, “Owner-san asked me to pass this on to you.”

She extended a brown paper bag. It was... small and rectangular in shape. Sakura took it, and found that it felt very, very, _very_ much like a book.

Sakura peeked inside.

It was Icha Icha Paradise. The first in the series. The original. The book that spawned all the rest.

She might have teared up a little. “ _Thank you_ ,” she said.

Konan pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a sudden, incredible headache. “Out,” she said, pointing toward the door.

Sakura beamed at her and fairly skipped away.

 

* * *

  
  
“Sakura-san,” yelled Deidara about three seconds after she’d gotten over the threshold. He appeared out of nowhere in a whirl of bright eyes and silky hair and barrelled toward her.He grabbed her arm and spun her around, tugging her back out the door. He snatched up a bag that he’d had leaning against the wall and slung it over one shoulder without breaking stride.“Come on, come on!”

“What? Deida-- where are we going? Deidara-san!”

“‘-kun!’” He corrected her cheerfully.

She was surprised, annoyed, kind of angry - but she wasn’t really frightened until he crowed, “Watch your head!” and then shoved her into a van that had only just pulled up.

“Eeek!” she tumbled onto a seat, feet scrambling for purchase behind her, and swore when she flailed off the seat and hit the floor of the van with a thump. She could see beneath one of the front seats. There was an empty can from an energy drink rolling around under there. She unstuck her face from the not-very-clean floor.

Somebody had really big boots.

Before she could finish that thought - or contemplate the radiating warmth from where somebody’s leg was jammed against her shoulder - Deidara tossed his bag onto her legs. It was heavy and foiled her attempt to get up by throwing her off balance.

He squirmed in after her, pulling the door of the van closed with a metallic grating sound.

“Deidara,” she growled, dropping the honorific. She rolled to look at him with murderous eyes.

“Scary, yeah,” he said with laughter in his voice.

His hands tugged at her, trying to haul her up, but she smacked them sharply. She could sit up straight all on her own, thank you very much.

He rolled his eyes.

She shoved Deidara’s heavy bag away and got to her knees, and --

Oh.

So that’s who the other person was.

Every time she saw Kisame, it was like her brain stopped processing everything else for a second just so it could take in how ungodly _big_ he was.

It didn’t help that she was on her knees on the floor of the van and Kisame was scrunched into one of the seats. Her eyes were about level with his _knee_. “Kisame-san,” she said, trying to sound calm.

“Sakura-san,” he said in a level voice.

“Itachi, what are you waiting for?” Complained Deidara.

Itachi - presumably the driver, since all Sakura could glimpse was black hair and pale hands - didn’t respond to him at all.

Kisame gave a rumbling sigh, reached out and picked Sakura up.

He put her down on a seat.

It happened so quickly she didn’t even have time to panic. “It’s best to put your seat belt on,” he advised.

“I...”

She trailed off. She felt tiny. He hadn’t even had to _try_.

“Sakura?”

_That_ was Itachi’s voice. The lack of honorific made her feel calmer. Whatever else was going on, she thought Itachi was pretty safe. She swallowed and scrambled to find a seat belt. It was difficult because Kisame was next to her and he took up an awful lot of seating space.

When her belt clicked in with a snap, Itachi pulled away from the curb. “Finally,” sighed Deidara.

Everybody ignored him.

The van made some alarming noises as it trundled through traffic, full of rattles and rusty scrapings. Sakura glanced at the roof when she thought something had fallen down, but she found that it was a flake of rust.

It had to be Kisame’s van, because she’d already seen what Itachi and Deidara were driving. She looked at Kisame. “Your roof is rusting through,” she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

He flashed her a gleaming, very toothy smile. “It’s like a convertible.”

Riiiight.

She wasn’t even touching that comment. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to blow up a building, yeah!” Deidara crowed cheerfully.

“What.” Sakura said flatly. It was not a question because she believed very firmly that there was no question for which ‘we’re going to blow up a building’ could be an adequate answer.

From the driver’s seat, she heard Itachi make a short noise.

Deidara patted his bag, beaming at her. “It’s going to be beautiful,” he told her.

Several really uncharitable responses flashed through her mind, and she discarded all of them with a deep breath.

There were so many things to say that for almost a whole minute she couldn’t decide and didn’t say anything at all. She finally opened her mouth to ask why they were blowing a building up, but then realised that Deidara never really needed a reason. She shut her mouth with a click.

“The building is a warehouse in the industrial sector,” Itachi said after that long silence. “It is uninhabited and technically government property.”

“If there’s nothing in it, why on earth do you want to blow it up?” she asked finally.

Deidara opened his mouth. Kisame raised his voice to be heard over the rapturous commentary on the true artistic poignancy of it all. “The building is uninhabited, not empty. The group who use it as part of their supply chain injured Hidan a little while ago.”

Sakura remembered that night, she thought. She also remembered what an incredible little shit Hidan could be.

There was a heavily pregnant pause.

“Er,” said Sakura, hesitant to voice the ‘so?’ that was on her tongue. It was a pretty unkind thought, but... “Well, so?”

Kisame let out a bark of strangely pleasant laughter.

“It isn’t a matter of Hidan-san’s value,” said Itachi in his polite, level voice. “A group such as this must respond to attacks on its people. We have no recourse to conventional justice, and we cannot allow it to seem as though such attacks will be tolerated.”

Somehow when Itachi said it, it sounded so reasonable. Sakura nodded in understanding. It all made perfect sense, really - horrible, but perfect sense.

“It’s going to be _beautiful_ ,” Deidara repeated dreamily.

...and then it was back to seeming completely _insane_.

“Well, but, why am I here?”

“Aw, Sakura-chan,” Deidara cooed, “don’t you like hanging out with us?” He looked up at her through his eyelashes.

She eyed him. “When, exactly, did I become ‘chan’?”

“About five seconds ago.” He gave her a wounded look. “Mou, you let _Tobi_ use it.”

“I do,” Sakura admitted, tapping her fingertips nervously on her knee. “I could get mad at him, but I don’t think it’d help.”

“I should think not,” Itachi agreed a little drily.

“Tobi-san is...” she paused. “He’s different,” she finished lamely.

“Different like a retarded puppy,” said Deidara, rolling his eyes. “One who knows he’s done something wrong and gets all sad and pathetic, but who’s too dumb to stop peeing on the couch.”

Itachi didn’t make a sound, but his shoulders twitched, just a little.

“That’s cruel,” Sakura informed him, frowning. They were all so mean to Tobi, jeez. She paused. “Accurate,” she admitted slowly, “but cruel, too.”

Then she paused. “Ne, Deidara-kun,” she said in a sweet voice with narrowed eyes, causing him to raise his gaze to her again. “You don’t actually think you distracted me from my question, do you?”

He scratched the back of his neck and looked away. “It was worth a shot, yeah,” he muttered.

Nobody made any particular effort to answer her question.

“You’ll have to tell me eventually.”

“For blackmail, Sakura-san,” said a man from somewhere behind her seat. She recognised Zetsu’s voice, which made her jump and wriggle to look around behind her.

The van had another compartment after the seats they were in. It looked like it was packed with a big toolbox, among other things which included but were not limited to tarp, rope, a pile of what looked like ziplock bags, spare clothing, a flashlight, a small first aid kit, binoculars, a sewing kit, work gloves, a shovel, duct tape...

Huh.

They were very well prepared for... something. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what.

Zetsu looked stranger in such a mundane setting. She was used to seeing him, very occasionally, on his balcony surrounded by his plants. Even dressed in old jeans and an oversize jumper, he looked very out of place with his strange skin and golden eyes. He did not look entirely comfortable in the van, either.

“Zetsu-san,” she said, blinking. Then, “Hello,” she said, because she didn’t really have anything else to say. Zetsu was an odd one.

He blinked sleepily at her. “You will be less likely to inform the police of anything if there are witnesses to you performing a criminal activity,” he said.

“Oh,” said Sakura. “What if I promised I wasn’t going to sell you all out?” she asked weakly.

Kisame made a flat, amused noise. Deidara laughed.

“Policy,” said Itachi flatly. He didn’t sound terribly sympathetic. For a second, Sakura wondered how _he’d_ gotten involved in this mess.

“Oh," she said. Then she paused. “Well, what if I refuse?”

“That would be bad,” said Deidara, looking away.

“It isn’t recommended,” said Kisame, giving her a glance that might have qualified as concerned.

Ah.

She looked sideways at him and shifted, just a little, further away- a move that only put her closer to Deidara.

It took them more than an hour to drive to the location, where they alighted from the van several blocks away from their ultimate destination.

Itachi and Zetsu did not stay in the van, although they didn’t come with Sakura, Kisame and Deidara either. Sakura wasn’t entirely sure what it was they were doing.

“They will deal with the guards,” said Kisame helpfully when she asked.

“Guards?” she echoed, brow furrowing.

He nodded, unperturbed. “Locations like this are not usually left unprotected, if the group is big enough to spare the manpower. Zetsu-san and Itachi have gone to make sure there will be nobody in our way,” he said.

Sakura wasn’t quite sure what that meant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either. She had bigger problems, anyway, like Kisame’s huge hand resting on her shoulder, calmly steering her toward the building they’d targeted.

At least it really did seem to be empty - doors chained, windows boarded up. Kisame wasn’t particularly forceful or restraining with his grip on her - thankfully, because she was pretty sure he could snap her like a twig without breaking a sweat - but the gentle pressure was more than enough to let Sakura know exactly where she stood.

She found herself trembling a little as she watched Deidara muck around with a whole host of terrifying things he’d been keeping in his bag, including starter fluid, filter paper, camping gear, cleaning products and a range of things in bottles and jars - and sometimes in tiny, heavily-padded boxes - that she didn’t have a name for.

“Basically all of the explosives we use these days are from a nitric acid base,” Deidara was telling her cheerfully. “Which isn’t actually explosive, but you have to be careful when you’re making stuff with it because it’s really corrosive, yeah. Which I guess is why Sasori-sempai gets so annoyed when I make bombs in the kitchen...” he paused thoughtfully.

“Uh...huh,” Sakura said lamely, watching him fiddle with something in a heavily padded box. It occurred to her that when he’d dropped his bag on her legs in the van he’d _thrown explosives at her._

Deidara, meanwhile, actually seemed to sparkle. He had an inner glow of profound excitement, like a newly expectant mother, and his energy was nearly contagious. “...call it the nitrating principle,” he was saying. She nodded to show she was listening, even though she was really only half paying attention. He handed her a bottle.

She took it. Her eyes fell upon the label. _For IV infusion only. Not for direct IV injection._

She frowned. “Isn’t this a medicine?”

He nodded. “It’s used in treating heart conditions, yeah. I wouldn’t, um, shake it or anything,” he added, glancing at the bottle.

Sakura went very, very still. She looked at the bottle in her hand. Was it going to blow up? Catch fire? She had no idea. Behind her, she heard Kisame’s rumbling sigh.

“Anyway, we’re just gonna mix it with guncotton. It’s pretty simple, anyone can do it. But today, _you’re_ gonna do it.” He grinned at her.

“Very carefully,” Kisame interjected.

“She’ll be fine,” Deidara said breezily. “Sakura-san has steady hands.”

He couldn’t possibly know that, she thought hysterically. In fact, her hands had developed a slight but noticeable tremor. She hoped that wasn’t enough to upset whatever liquid was in the bottle she was holding.

For a second she felt the urge to hurl it away and flee screaming.

There was a buzz and a chime, and Kisame glanced at his phone. “Guards are down and out of the immediate area,” he reported.

Deidara clapped his hands. “Sweet! Let’s go.”

“Oh, god,” muttered Sakura. Kisame’s fingers squeezed her shoulder for a moment. It was probably meant to be supportive, but it felt faintly threatening. Kisame, by sheer virtue of being huge and spiky and terrifying to look at, was a lot better at appearing threatening than supportive.

They took a set of bolt cutters to the chain on the doors and headed inside. It was dim and dingy, and reeked of bleach. There was a dilapidated goods lift to the first floor and a creaky wooden stairway. Sakura cradled her bottle like the slightest bump or jerk might blow them all up. It probably wouldn’t, she supposed, but she knew nothing about explosives, and Deidara had warned her against shaking it.

Anything Deidara thought was dangerous was probably worth being wary of, since his sense of self-preservation was nearly non-existent.

Mixing explosives was an extremely nerve-wracking experience and Sakura hated it. Deidara watched her hands with pink cheeks and huge pupils, licking his lips. In another situation, it might have been flattering, but at the moment Sakura was so much more concerned with not blowing them up.

Despite his helpless and frankly disturbing fascination, Deidara’s instructions were rapid but clear. Unfortunately, they amounted to “mix and pray,” which wasn’t very helpful. But being as Sakura had no choice, she followed them cautiously.

“Be careful,” Kisame told her again. There was a thread of nervousness in his voice now, too. That wasn’t comforting.

“Kisa-kun doesn’t understand the beauty of my art at all.” Deidara laughed. “It’s not as unstable as he thinks,” he added to Sakura, shaking his head.

_Kisa-kun_ , thought Sakura wildly.

Sure.

Why not.

“Yes,” said Kisame flatly, “it is. All of your explosives are.”

“Please, this is super safe, yeah,” Deidara said loftily. “I didn’t want Sakura-san to get hurt. And you won’t,” he added happily, “as long as you don’t, you know, jostle anything.”

“Right,” muttered Sakura.

“Or let the temperature change at all,” he added thoughtfully, tapping his chin.

Sakura looked at him.

He scratched the back of his head. “Or, um, touch it unexpectedly.”

“I see,” she said, feeling her heart slam against her ribs. “Is there anything that _can’t_ make this blow up?”

He considered for a moment. “Hm, it does pretty okay when it’s very cold, yeah.”

“Well, it’s pretty cold today,” Sakura said optimistically.

“Oh,” said Deidara. “No, well, I mean... below negative thirty degrees.”

“Oh,” she said back to him.

There weren’t many places in the world that got below negative thirty. She swallowed and looked back at what she was doing.

She wondered how they’d take it if she just... stopped.

A glance at Kisame’s face told her all she needed to know on that topic.

There was, horribly, a kind of accomplished feeling when she’d managed to dissolve one substance in the other. It left her with a strange, plasticky feeling thing, and Deidara assured her that it was much less likely to explode at random now that it was done.

“Oh,” she said, shaking with adrenalin and relief. “Good.”

Kisame gave her an encouraging smile. It was very pointy. She was not encouraged.

“The last thing is a detonator,” Deidara said cheerfully after they’d laid in all the explosives. He eyed Sakura for a moment. “I think I should do that bit,” he added, pulling out what looked like a long, thin tube.

Kisame wasted no time at all in hauling Sakura out of there.

It was cold outside - or maybe that was just the sweat cooling on Sakura’s skin. Kisame’s hand was no longer heavy on her shoulder: he gave her enough space to breathe and shoved his own hands in his pockets.

Sakura didn’t know how she felt about Kisame. He was... big, and scary, and he looked strange with his filed teeth and blue skin. But he’d actually been remarkably polite and helpful. And even though he was clearly there to enforce her good behaviour, he hadn’t taken advantage of how intimidating he was...

She wondered how much of that was Itachi’s influence over him or just his own character.

“You won’t have to do it again,” he said unexpectedly as they neared the van.

She’d suspected as much, but it was good to hear it. She heaved the door open with the sound of sliding metal and climbed inside.

Itachi’s eyes flicked up at her from his textbook, which he was perusing from his perch in the driver’s seat. “Deidara?” he asked, glancing behind them.

“Setting a fuse.”

Itachi nodded. He gave Sakura one more long look before returning to a page on contracts, which looked decidedly unexciting to Sakura.

Deidara returned to the van not fifteen minutes later, looking much too pleased with himself. “It’s not very time sensitive,” he explained apologetically, shrugging as Itachi drove them away. “I’d have liked to stay and see it...” he said, turning around as though the warehouse might be blowing up right then.

Sakura shuddered. It was cowardly, but she was glad she didn’t have to watch.

“You’re not meant to hang around after you’ve set something to blow up,” he said mournfully.

“Well,” she said, struggling to find her voice. “You’ve got your art projects, right?”

His lips curved into a grin. “Yeah,” he agreed.

It was sundown when they finally made it home, and Sakura’s stomach was growling. All she wanted from her life at that moment was to eat some food and go to sleep. She’d consider the ramifications of being party to blowing up a building tomorrow.

Or maybe next week.

She wasn’t really fussy.

She was really hungry, though. Even the manky half-pizza she’d left out of the fridge all night was starting to sound appealing. She did the responsible thing and threw those gross leftovers out, and then peered listlessly into the refrigerator for ten minutes.

Aside from how ridiculously empty everybody else’s shelves were, nothing interesting jumped out at her. Sakura had a cheap cut of meat wrapped in paper, a cabbage, three carrots in a bag, some yoghurt and a lone tomato.

Hmm.

Nope.

Instant noodles it was.

The noodles tasted like calories and salt with a hint of cardboard. Sakura ate them ravenously.

The next step in Sakura’s frankly fantastic plan was sleep. When she got to her bedroom, however, Sakura found it occupied. In fact, her _bed_ was occupied. By a blanketed lump topped with a fall of silvery blond hair.

She just didn’t have the capacity to deal with this right now.

“Hidan,” she snapped, storming over to her bed. He was dead to the world, breathing heavy and even.

She grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head up. “HIDAN,” she snarled, and used her grip to shake him like a naughty puppy.

He woke roaring. One wildly flailing arm smacked her across the chest, but she didn’t even consider letting go.

“Get out of my bed!” She shrieked at the top of her voice, shaking again for good measure.

“Ow!” He grabbed her hand and managed to loosen her grip easily, and then shoved it back toward her. “ _Ow_ , do not pull my fucking hair. What is your _problem_?”

She shook the sting out of her hand and glowered at him. “You’re in my _bed_ ,” she growled, gesturing at him.

“So? You weren’t using it,” he muttered, rubbing his head where she’d gripped his hair.

“It’s _my bed_!” She sputtered. “You don’t get to just come into my room and sleep in my bed whenever I’m not in the house! You have your _own_ bed!”

“Yours is nicer,” he said sulkily.

“I don’t care! Get out of my bed!”

His strange pinkish eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I will,” he informed her with a sudden change of attitude. “It’s not like you can make me, you’re not strong enough.”

She ground her teeth. He was _right_ , the bastard.

“Fine,” she turned on her heel.

Smugly, Hidan settled back down to doze - but not too heavily. Jashin only knew what plan she’d come up with.

Initially, Sakura decided that she could probably take a nap in Hidan’s bed, since it obviously wasn’t occupied. But when she peered into his room, she was overwhelmed with the scents of drying blood and excrement.

Apparently terrified animals were frequently incontinent.

There was blood on his bed sheets.

Of course.

God, no wonder the idiot was sleeping in her bed.

Her secondary plan of wrecking some of his stuff seemed like it wouldn’t work, either, since evidently all his stuff was already ruined.

She eyed the mess that was Hidan’s room for a few moments and contemplated.

Well, fine, clearly pissing Hidan off in retaliation would have to wait. She took a blanket down to the couch in the living room. It was only seven o’clock, so doubtless there would be noise and yelling and fighting at some point before all her housemates managed to make it to bed, but the living room was used infrequently, and if she closed the door she was pretty sure she wouldn’t somehow end up caught in the crossfire.

The couch wasn’t that comfortable, but she was tired enough that she probably would have slept on a bed of broken glass. Just as she was curling up tighter and drifting away, a terrible, fantastic thought struck her.

She felt around for her phone and tapped out a message.

<To: Rock Lee  
Timestamp: 7:09 PM  
Message body: I had a big day, I’m kind of exhausted. Do you think you could ask if Gai-sensei could wake me with one of his REALLY INSPIRATIONAL speeches in the morning? It’s okay if he doesn’t want to. I just think it would help me feel more motivated about running. :) >

Then she turned her phone off.

Smugly, she hoped Hidan enjoyed his wake-up call.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need to put this note in, to: initially I had a whole scene written out for making, like, basically ANFO, I guess, in the kitchen back at the share house, but then I decided it was kind of irresponsible to include random instructions for making explosives in a fanfic? Like, I don’t know what kind of real-life person thinks it’s cool to blow shit up, but people just fucking astonish you sometimes. And I’m not saying that not finding instructions in my fanfic would stop somebody but I don’t want to have weird feelings about it. So now you have that very vague description you read, which is also a little incorrect - medical nitroglycerine is diluted. You can’t do what they did with it. And even if you could, I wouldn’t recommend it.


	15. Interlude: Omake  - Hidan/Sakura

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an extra that's not at all part of the actual story. It is, however, a little porny and full of swearing. If you don't want to read it, you can totally skip it.

"Let me go," Sakura growled.

Hidan crowded her much too close. "Make me," he said with a grin.

She hit him. It wasn't a nice ladylike slap, either; she knew how to put her shoulder behind the blow.

Hidan's head snapped to one side. He made a soft grunt of pain. His shoulders moved when he exhaled a single, shaking breath. When he turned his face back toward her his pupils were blown wide.

Sakura met his eyes and a flush of warmth ran down her spine. She looked from her hand to his face and back for a heartbeat. "You ...liked that," she said in wonderment.

For once in his life Hidan didn't say anything. There was a fine tremor in his hands. He licked his bottom lip.

Sakura reached up, giving him every opportunity to stop her, and twined her fingers into his hair. She twisted and yanked, hauling him down. His mouth smacked into hers.

She licked him, lips wet and silky and warm. He let her trace the insides of his lips. He let her rub her tongue against his, slick and rough and unbearably sensual. She could feel the next shaking breath he took. His hands slid from the wall beside her head, helplessly drawn, skimming over her tense shoulders, down her ribs, over her hips. His hands were warm and left her skin hot and shivery in their wake.

Sakura grunted and pulled him closer. She released one hand from his hair so she could grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him against her. He went willingly. She could feel every solid inch of him pressing up against her. She liked it.

One-handed, she yanked hard on his hair. She sank her teeth into his bottom lip without bothering to be gentle. She felt him jerk. He made a noise, a sharp begging sound in his throat.

Sakura let him go.

Hidan's eyes were unfocused. His hair was messed up and his face was flushed, high and fierce across his cheekbones. "Fuck," he mumbled between heavy breaths, looking at her mouth.

Sakura licked her own lips - she could _taste_ him, oh god - and exhaled slowly. She could feel her own heart thundering along in her chest. Her every nerve was lit up on full alert. She felt like the want in her was almost too big to fit inside her skin.

She made a short agreeing noise.

"Yeah," she said, breathing hard.

"Come on," he said, and his voice had dropped a little lower, stirring up things low in her belly. His mouth, wet with saliva - _her_ saliva - rubbed against her neck. She was sensitive there, and he raised a trail of shivers with his warm breath.

Sakura breathed and tried to think calmly. Because she didn't really like Hidan. She snorted softly and raised one hand to push him away from her so she could tell him to piss off.

"Don't," he said, making her hesitate. "Come on, Sakura. You fucking want it. What have you got to lose?"

She could see it in her mind's eye, suddenly and abruptly, a lightning strike of inspiration courtesy of her libido: her riding him, tangled on the floor with her hands fisted in his hair. She thought of shining sweat and tangled hair and mumbled curses, of hard muscles shifting and contracting underneath her while he rocked his hips helplessly, grunting and whining under her, hands clawing at her skin.

What did she have to lose? Nothing, really.

The hand that was meant to be pushing him away somehow ended up hauling him closer. She reached up and yanked on his hair, watched his breath catch and felt his body shudder. She bared her teeth at him.

"You're right," she said, watching him. He responded so beautifully under her hands. She wanted to pull him apart. She wanted to have him stupid and desperate and aching beneath her nails and her teeth. She wanted gasps and half-articulated moans.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked, surprised at how hard her voice was. "Do you want to fuck or not?"

The look on his face was priceless. And hot.

" _Fuck yes_ ," he growled.

* * *

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted this as an omake to chapter 13 on ffnet and only _just_ remembered to add it here tonight. I'M SORRY. D:
> 
> Next time there's a ridiculous omake I promise I will post it to AO3 first. >_>
> 
>  **Shout out:** Chairisse accidentally reminded me to post this.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which underpants are flung around, Team Gai makes a reappearance and Hidan prays. Like a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been posted as a tool in the procrastinator's arsenal, designed specifically for the exam period. Use it wisely. (You can procrastinate further by leaving me a comment, aw yeah. See how I take care of you? :P)

Sakura did not, in fact, wake to the sounds of Gai-sensei traumatising Hidan - she woke hours earlier, when Deidara poked her in the face.

She cracked one eye open. “Mmmng?” she said.

“Come on,” he said, much too loudly, “It’s on TV, yeah!”

“Mph?” she wondered.

He shoved at her, forcing her - amid noises like a cranky bear - to slump in a vaguely sitting position so he could burrow between her blanket and the couch next to her. The very old television in the corner of the room was small and analogue and gave everything a strange, sepia cast.

Sakura squinted at the sudden light from the screen. “ _What’s_ on TV?” she asked finally, blinking. Then, when she noticed a little timestamp in the corner of the display on-screen, “It’s _three in the morning_ ,” she growled.

“Listen,” he hissed at her, pointing wildly. She could feel him next to her, almost vibrating with tension.

Grumpily, she tugged on her blanket. He gave it up, allowing her to wrap it around her own shoulders so she was a hunched cocoon on the couch.

“Oh,” she said, when she paid attention to the broadcast.

She recognised the building. How could she not?

On screen, it fell down. Somebody had caught it with the camera of their smartphone. The person’s hand was shaking terribly.

There was a lot of dust and crumpling and... and the footpath cracked around it, people scattered. The noise was tinny, but she could imagine.

“Oh,” she said again, stupidly. “That’s... we did that?”

“Yeah,” breathed Deidara. He was clutching her arm, fingers digging in, but he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to his grip.

She glanced sideways at him.

She was uncomfortably reminded of how Hidan had looked that first night, all soft flushing and blown pupils and panting breath. She moved her arm a little, experimentally. Deidara didn’t notice.

There was a newsreader discussing the explosion, doling out information in a pleasant but grave voice. It seemed like he didn’t expect it to mean anything to the viewers, just an interesting happenstance to contemplate.

No injuries. No casualties. Police investigating. Evidence of gang activity in the area. Warehouse a suspected hub of organised crime. Explosives set intentionally.

Sakura swallowed.

She almost hadn’t thought about the explosives since she’d helped set them, but now she found herself trembling.

What if somebody had seen them?

What if somebody traced them?

Would she go to jail?

On the news, it seemed like a much more dangerous, more criminal activity than it had been at the time - Oh, sure, she’d been frightened of _blowing herself up_ , but not of the consequences of success.

If anybody found out she’d been there - well, she could say goodbye to a career in medicine. She’d never get a registration.

“It’s _beautiful_ ,” murmured Deidara.

Sakura shot him an annoyed look. She really hadn’t needed to see this, and it grated that he was so excited and so completely unconcerned.

“Ugh,” she said, swinging her feet onto his lap and rearranging her blankets. “I’m going back to sleep.” She peeled his fingers away from her arm. She felt tender there, and she’d probably be bruised by morning.

 _Proper_ morning, anyway.

“Eh?” Deidara looked at her. The sickly glow of the television leeched the colour from him until his face was just white skin and hard angular shadows. His hair was messed up - he’d been asleep, too, she decided.

“Sleep,” she drawled. “Do you know it?”

“But the broadcast is on,” he pointed.

Sakura eyed him for a moment. She could not possibly say the first thing on her mind - which was not so much 'saying’ a thing as it was actually just the urge to raise one leg and kick him in the face.

She mined the abyssal depths of her psyche for more patience. “Deidara-kun,” she said in a very patient voice, “I know you’re very excited, and that it is very, um, artistic for you. But for me, if anybody finds out I had anything to do with that I’m not going to be able to be a doctor, and I’ll to to jail, and I’m worried about doing something so dangerous - people could have been _hurt_ \- and I’m really tired and I want to go back to sleep.”

“Oh.” It seemed like it took him a while to contemplate how people could have all these complicated thoughts and feelings when there were _explosions_ going on. “I thought you were waiting for the broadcast down here, yeah,” he said, giving her a puzzled expression. “Why aren’t you in your bed?”

Sakura supposed that from his perspective, sleeping next to the television so she could view the product of her delinquency was a totally reasonable response. Some of her ire melted away and then she was just tired. “Hidan,” she sighed.

Deidara’s eyebrows, strange shadows in the half-light, rose. “Hidan?”

“Hidan is in my bed. There’s blood and... other things... all over his.”

Deidara snorted. “Of course there is.” There was a pause. “Do you want me to kick him out? I totally can, yeah,” he glanced wistfully at the screen, and she felt a surprising buzz of affection for him.

He was completely crazy, but he was still pretty cool.

Sakura could just imagine what ‘kicking him out’ would entail. There would be screaming and hair-pulling and blood and they’d be really lucky that Zetsu was their nearest neighbour because otherwise somebody would call the police. Again.

She shook her head. “I’ve got it under control. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Deidara looked disappointed but not angry. He nodded, tugged the blanket further over her toes on his lap, and returned his full attention to the television.

The volume was low, and the news reader’s voice was droning and calm - Sakura had very little trouble tuning it out. She dropped back off to sleep almost immediately.

 

* * *

 

The second time she woke up, the blanket was on top of her head and trailing off the end of the couch, and Deidara’s face was mashed against her stomach. That, at least, explained why her toes were still warm.

For a second, she couldn’t figure out what had woken her.

Then she heard it.

“SAKURA-SAN!”

Deidara jerked awake at the sheer volume of Gai’s voice.

He blinked blue eyes blearily up at her.

High above them, she could hear the sound of Hidan’s voice, but not the words.

“AH! MY BELOVED SAKURA-SAN HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO THIS UNCOUTH CREATURE!”

Lee was _loud_. And he sounded honestly, seriously distressed. Sakura felt guilty for all of a second. Then she heard a thump that sounded a _lot_ like Hidan falling out of the bed - her bed, thank you very much - and her guilt was assuaged by feelings of righteous smugness.

“Are you fucking stupid?” Hidan’s voice snapped, barely audible by comparison.

“...the hell?” Deidara squinted uncertainly.

Sakura was aware, peripherally, that she should be more distressed at waking with a grown man curled into her stomach. Deidara had a perfectly functional bed, after all. He should have gone back there.

He probably just fell asleep watching the news, though.

Also Deidara was a cuddler, and that was adorable. He didn’t wake up looking silky and beautiful, either: his eyes were a little puffy, his hair a violent mess, and there was an imprint of a button from Sakura’s pyjamas on his cheek.

There was shrieking upstairs. Not for the first time, Sakura noted that Hidan got kind of shrill when he was annoyed. It was followed by a crash.

There was a pause.

“YOUR ENTHUSIASM BECOMES YOU, UNCOUTH STRANGER!” Gai-sensei bellowed. “IT WOULD BE INSULTING NOT TO RESPOND WITH ALL THE VIGOUR OF MY YOUTHFUL HEART!”

“GAI-SENSEI!” Came Lee’s broken voice, caught on heavy tears.

“Shut the fuck up, you sick freaks! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?”

Sakura held in a snort, because she had once asked that precise question. The skills required to climb to the second floor balcony was actually pretty impressive.

The next crash was really, really loud. Gai-sensei gave an enthusiastic whoop and then the next several minutes were a terrible cacophony of noise and pain and the sounds of Lee crying about how beautiful it all was.

Deidara was watching the ceiling with a confused expression. “What...?”

Sakura patted his soft hair gently. “It’s okay,” she assured him.

There was another crash, and a yelp that sounded a lot like Tenten.

Deidara’s eyes flicked from her to the ceiling and back again. “Sure you don’t want to check on your friends?”

“...Probably,” Sakura sighed. Deidara shifted and she squirmed around so she could stumble off the couch. “There’s no way I’m going to get away with not going for a run with them this morning anyway,” she muttered.

“Ew,” Deidara said emphatically. He buried his face into the spot where her head had been and pulled the blanket over his head.

Sakura slid the door open and headed for the stairs, but she was forced to pause when she passed the doorway to the kitchen.

Sasori was drinking his sludgy, foul coffee at the table, looking bored, and his heavy-lidded eyes were boring straight through Neji’s skull. Neji, polished and unflappable as ever, was sipping steaming tea from one of Deidara’s cute but slightly misshapen bird mugs.

His pale eyes flicked to Sakura, then back to Sasori. Sasori didn’t even move, apparently regarding Sakura as a part of the landscape.

“Ano...” Sakura scratched her head, looking between them. “Is everything alright here?”

“Fine,” said Sasori.

Neji made a noise she was going to interpret as agreement.

Neither blinked.

“Oookay,” Sakura said, and stepped away from the doorway.

She made her way up the stairs, wincing when she noticed that Kakuzu’s door was open on the first floor.

She found the man himself leaning against the doorframe of her bedroom. He glanced sideways at her as she padded down the hallway. His clothes were sleeveless again today, his winding scars on full display.

“Morning,” she said, but she was drowned out by Gai-sensei’s roar of: “A CHEAP TRICK, UNCOUTH STRANGER!”

Kakuzu glanced back into the room. His eyebrows rose, just a little. Oh, god, Sakura thought, that could not be good. She edged around him and peered through the doorway.

The bed was a mess, the mattress kind of sagging off one side, and there was a hole in her sheets - pretty much unsurprising, she supposed. The lightbulb in her lamp had broken at some point. She’d have to do some serious vacuuming if she ever wanted to walk around barefoot again. There were speckles of red blood scattered on the wooden floor and one of the walls.

Hidan was waving around her panties as though they were a shield.

Lee was sobbing.

Gai-sensei was frozen, uncertainly, twitching a little.

Tenten was sitting in the corner with her head between her knees, trying to breathe through her shrieks of laughter.

Sakura fought the urge to cover her eyes and melt into the floor. At some point, her chest of drawers had been overturned, and one - only _one_ \- of the drawers had been knocked out.

The room was a perfect storm of underwear. There was a bra hanging from the light fixture. Hidan had tucked another pair of panties in the waistband at the back of his pants, ready to be used as a weapon or shield at any moment.

Sakura wanted, oh how she wanted, to be really angry about this.

Except that she’d basically orchestrated it. Who, exactly, was she going to be angry at, even?

She paused.

Well, a target _did_ kind of present itself.

The only reason she got away with it was because Hidan was much too focused on Gai-sensei as a perceived threat (which was quite reasonable, judging from the lovely bruises blooming on his forearms where he’d evidently been hard-pressed to block the older man’s strikes).

So he between the noise of Tenten’s hysterical cackling, Lee’s bawling and Gai-sensei’s soliloquising about his dirty fighting, Hidan never heard Sakura when she walked right up behind him.

She grabbed a handful of his hair, pulled him off balance with a hard yank, twisted from the hips and used her rear hand to punch him in the jaw.

She did it very much as though she was trying to punch him through the wall.

He did not go through the wall, but he did fall over. He looked at her with wide eyes and heavy breath. His pupils were huge with adrenalin.

Silence descended upon the room, punctuated by the occasional aborted gasp of Tenten’s laughter.

“ _Bitch_ ,” he breathed, staring at her like --

Sakura was not actually sure.

She also totally did not care. She picked her way across the floor’s debris and reached down toward Hidan’s hips. He let her come close enough that her hair spilt onto his shoulder.

She pulled her underpants from his waistband.

He blinked.

“Sakura-san!” Lee said, stifling his sobs. “Your maidenly beauty is eclipsed only by the fierceness of your youthful spirit!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Hidan mouth ‘maidenly beauty’ with an expression of deep, deep confusion.

Sakura turned toward Lee. In these situations, she decided, ignoring the glass and blood and bedding and - oh my god, _panties_ \- strewn across her bedroom, you could either freak out, or roll with it.

“Awesome,” she said. “Are we going for a run?”

Gai-sensei beamed. “Truly, Sakura-san, your spirit is commendable. Tenten has preserved the state of your running shoes,” he added, pointing vaguely to Tenten’s corner, where she was red-faced and covering her mouth, having finally recovered from her... affliction.

“Sorry,” she said, smiling helplessly. She held out a pair of glass-free sneakers, a tee-shirt and a sports bra, which made Lee start blushing and stammering all over again.

By the time Sakura was changed and had her sneakers pulled on, Kakuzu had dragged Hidan from her bedroom and the house was - more or less - quiet again.

“You actually have a pretty good uppercut,” Tenten said thoughtfully after they collected Neji from his mutant staring contest and hit the pavement. “Have you considered taking up boxing?”

“Boxing?” Sakura repeated dubiously. “All I know about boxing is broken noses and brain damage.”

Tenten snorted. “I forgot you were a medical student. Basically any martial art that isn’t just, you know, forms and kata, is going to be dangerous,” she shrugged.

“I’ll think about it,” Sakura said, in a tone that indicated she would definitely not think about it but that she also didn’t want to keep having the conversation.

“I’m just saying. Your housemate’s, you know, maybe not martial artist, but he’s a hell of a brawler,” Tenten pointed out cautiously. “And that guy with the scars doesn’t exactly look like a pushover. It might not be a bad idea to, you know, learn a little self-defence - even if it’s not boxing or anything.”

Sakura shot her a sideways look. The unfortunate thing was that Tenten was probably right. She didn’t really think her housemates were going to attack her in her sleep, but there was a lot - a _lot_ \- of casual violence going on in her household. And now she knew they were involved in the kind of organised crime that meant blowing up buildings and territory skirmishes, well...

She ran one hand through her sweaty hair. “You might be right,” she said. “I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t ‘look into it’,” Tenten said shortly. “Come to training.”

“With - With Gai-sensei?” she asked, a little alarmed.

Tenten gave her a flat look that was about as far from her earlier giggling as possible. “Yes, with Gai-sensei. He’s one of the best martial artists in the country, and he’s an excellent teacher. Also,” she added thoughtfully, “if you learn somewhere else, there will be tears. Manly tears of inadequacy. So many tears. The dojo will _flood_.”

This was not an image that made Sakura more inclined to visit.

“How long have we been going?” Sakura asked instead. Her breath was coming harder.

“Nine minutes, don’t change the subject. You have Sundays off, so we’ll see you next weekend. We can work out the rest of your schedule then.”

She managed almost sixteen minutes before she had to slow to a walk, catch her breath a little, and try again.

“Sakura-san! Your improvement is inspiring,” Lee told her, beaming as he fell back to join her. “Today I will accompany you!”

“Excellent,” said Tenten, picking up the pace. “Hey, Lee,” she added brightly, “Sakura’s going to come by next Sunday morning - she wants to learn some basic self-defence. Do you think Gai-sensei’d be okay with that?”

She didn’t even wait for him to answer taking off to catch up with Gai-sensei and Neji. For a second there, Sakura  _hated_ Tenten.

Lee turned to Sakura, eyes brimming. “S-Sakura-san,” he said, wiping his tears with one hand.

Oh, _god_.

 

* * *

 

Sakura did her level best to put next Sunday out of her mind. She returned home, finished cleaning up all of the mess the police officers had made in their house and settled down to begin her paper on culturally safe and sensitive practices in the medical profession for Kakashi-sensei’s class.

Hidan seemed to require some kind of recuperation time - or so Sakura assumed - because he didn’t really appear and make a nuisance of himself for a little while.

“It is very quiet,” Sasori commented at six in the morning on Tuesday. Sakura paused with her tea halfway to her mouth, peering around.

As a rule, only she, Sasori and Kakuzu were sentient at six o’clock on any given morning, so his comment that it seemed quiet was a little strange.

“It’s always quiet when Hidan and Deidara are sleeping,” she pointed out. She sipped her tea.

“It was quiet yesterday, too,” Sasori pointed out. He added water to his mug with smooth, deft movements and the smell of his coffee hit the air, so thick she could taste it.

Sakura pursed her lips. “It was, wasn’t it?” she said thoughtfully.

There was a moment’s silence. Her gaze drifted to the ceiling. “Maybe Hidan-san’s sick? I should probably make sure he’s okay,” she commented slowly. She had hit him rather hard. She didn’t really anticipate that she’d done him much damage, but --

She tapped her fingers on her mug thoughtfully.

“I was not complaining,” Sasori said.

She glanced at him. “You’re not worried?”

He turned his eyes on her. It was a strange fact that no matter his actual feeling, Sasori’s eyes were heavy-lidded. There was a kind of bored, sleepy languor about him.

Sakura did not understand Sasori.

“About Hidan?” he said, tilting his head as though that was a substitute for having an actual facial expression. “No, Sakura-san,” he drawled, “concern isn’t the feeling Hidan inspires in me.”

And then he drifted silently out of the kitchen, with only the scent of thick, bitter instant coffee to mark his passing.

“I suppose I set myself up for that one,” she muttered into her tea.

Sakura ended up ten minutes late for class, but since it was one of Kakashi-sensei’s it hardly mattered. She spent most of the hour taking notes for Tsunade-sama’s much more interesting and way better-taught class the following morning.

He breezed in fifteen minutes before class ended, collected their papers, assigned reading and then gave them a “discussion topic” to fill the last five minutes of their time, during which he perched on the edge of his desk and perused Icha Icha, which just reminded Sakura that she hadn’t even had time to start Paradise.

“Ah,” Kakashi said, about thirty seconds before their hour was up, “if you had an appointment with Yamato-kun today you’ll have to reschedule. He’s busy.”

Was there any of Kakashi’s work Yamato _didn’t_ do for him?

Sakura paused on her way out the door. “Is Yamato-sempai okay?” she asked. She found she was already bracing herself to regret asking. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she usually ended up regretting all her conversations with Kakashi.

Kakashi raised his single visible eye from the book. Today he had a lopsided bandanna covering the other one. He scratched his chin - or, the scarf covering his chin - thoughtfully. “He’s fine,” he said.

He did not elaborate.

There was silence.

She eyed him.

“Student-san, what a scary face,” Kakashi drawled. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Sakura did, in fact, but she hated that leaving the lecture theatre made her feel like she was following Kakashi’s suggestion. Ugh, thinking about Kakashi was only going to make her angry. She dashed off for her shift at TRIVIA and resolved to put it out of her mind.

TRIVIA was the usual weekday madness of chattering undergrads and zombie-eyed postgrad students, pretentious latte art and delicious smells, punctuated occasionally by entitled customers who made her blood pressure spike.

“I saw the news on Sunday morning,” Pein said neutrally when he handed her a cup.

Sakura affected indifference. “So did I,” she said.

His strange, ringed eyes flicked from her to the milk he was foaming and back. “Nobody was injured.”

“No,” she agreed.

He nodded and returned all his attention to the coffee, and apparently that subject was now closed because he didn’t mention it again.

When Sakura returned home she found sufficient evidence of Hidan’s existence to assuage any burgeoning concern and swiftly replace it with irritation: there was broken crockery on the kitchen floor and screaming from the the first storey.

Well, fine.

Over the next several days she suddenly found that not only was Hidan well, he was _everywhere_. He was running into her in the bathroom doorway, half-dressed with a toothbrush in his mouth. He was squinting into the refrigerator at six o’clock in the morning as though it contained the answers to the universe. He broke into her bedroom and perused her copy of Icha Icha Tactics while perched out on her balcony railing.

That last one she only knew about because Zetsu informed her that Hidan read aloud.

“Little _shit_ ,” Zetsu hissed, glowering at her in the dark. And then, “Not that I mind, but he’s very loud,” he added mildly.

“I’m so sorry,” Sakura muttered, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know how he keeps getting in.”

“We could cut off his feet,” he growled.

“Er.”

“Or switch his hair products for super glue.”

“Do I have to choose out of those options?” Sakura wondered. She didn’t really want to get into a prank war with Hidan.

Or, actually, any of her housemates. She couldn’t even imagine the sheer chaos Deidara could cause with that kind of motive.

“Maybe I’ll try changing the lock first,” she said weakly.

Zetsu hissed.

Whatever that meant.

Sakura invested in a new lock and did not mention the incident to Hidan.

On her way home from work on Friday, she picked up a tiny pot of mint from the local nursery. She didn’t manage to kill it between the nursery and her house, which was a great relief, so she left it on the railing of Zetsu’s balcony with an apologetic post-it note: _I changed the lock. Everybody likes mint, right?_

Zetsu never mentioned it, but the mint disappeared and returned in a new pot near the poppies. Over time, it grew into a lush, sweet-smelling sprawl of greenery in the sunlight.

For all that Zetsu was completely insane, he was relatively predictable: he liked peace, quiet, gardening and order. Relations with Hidan were somewhat... harder to predict.

Sakura could think of no reason for him to be standing in the corridor at eleven o’clock at night, chanting scripture at her closed door.

She closed her textbook, rubbed her temples and rolled off her bed to go fling the door open. Despite the liquid, unsettling sounds of his chanting, Hidan really looked pretty serene. He was dressed in ragged jeans and an unzipped hoodie and nothing else, because in general Hidan did not believe in shirts or shoes, and his hair was wet from a recent shower.

He leaned against the far wall, eyes closed, reciting a prayer at full volume.

“What are you doing?” Sakura asked, crossing her arms.

He cracked one eye open, but didn’t pause in his prayer. He held up one finger. She closed her eyes, sagged against her doorjamb, and waited.

It took him another ten or fifteen seconds to be done.

“Well?” she prodded.

“Praying,” he said, as though she’d asked the stupidest question possible.

“I can see that. What are you doing praying _here_?” Her eyes did a quick flick down his body, where she noticed that he’d cut markings into his palms: a triangle in a circle. “Do you need those bandaged?”

“ _No_ ,” he hissed, clenching his hands into fists and holding them protectively in front of his chest, like she might leap upon him with a first aid kit at any second.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so can you go back to your own room now?”

He made a frustrated noise and his eyes narrowed. “I’m praying for you, you heathen dipshit,” he growled, nodding at something behind her.

She turned her head to see the precise symbol on his hands had also been printed on her door, outlined by a bloody handprint that had gone a fainter brown-red.

“Fantastic,” she drawled. “Look, not that I don’t appreciate it, but I need to get some homework done. Do you think you could pray for me _quieter_?”

“No,” he said flatly.

Sakura inhaled a very deep breath and blew it out. “I see,” she said, in a tone that indicated that she really, really did not see.

She closed the door and returned to her textbook.

Hidan’s next prayer involved beating his head on the wall and some kind of hideous ululation.

Sakura climbed down the outside of her own balcony, walked around to the front of the house, let herself in and knocked on Kakuzu’s door.

She had to knock three times, because apparently Kakuzu had invested in some kind of industrial-strength noise cancelling headphones.

“I have no idea what that noise he’s making is but I have a test and I really, really need to read this,” she said in a rush, waving her textbook.

Kakuzu raised his eyes to the ceiling. There was another dull thud and a mournful wail. He heaved a huge, put-upon sigh and held the door open.

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” Sakura muttered, ducking in beneath his arm.

Kakuzu just grunted. “Don’t make any noise or touch anything,” he said shortly, and then he closed the door and returned to whatever he was doing - which, if Sakura looked over his shoulder at the glow of his laptop screen, appeared to involve some kind of spreadsheet. Riveting.

The sounds of Hidan’s praying were much fainter now that they weren’t literally five feet from her bed, and she found that if she tried, she could drown him out - at least until he changed prayer, when she was thrown and had to adjust again.

Kakuzu, at least, was the best kind of study partner: he enforced an oppressive silence in his space and appeared to be in a constant state of silent judgement - not just of her, but of everything - so that she felt like she had no choice except to study in silence.

Of course, Hidan didn’t _stop_ his praying right outside her bedroom.

Sakura slept on the couch.

Again.

“This isn’t what I pay my rent for,” she pointed out to Kakuzu as she pulled out a spare blanket again.

He gave her a considering look, but the only response he made was a dull grunt.

Sakura woke the following morning to Sasori perched in a crouch on the arm of the couch next to her feet, staring at her and sipping his coffee like some kind of terrifying bird of prey.

“Uh,” she said. “Were you watching me sleep?”

He blinked once, slowly and declined to answer her question. “Sakura-san,” he said in a scratchy voice.

“...Yes?”

“You have got to do something about Hidan.”

She blinked. “Wait, what?”

Since when was Hidan _her_ problem? But Sasori was already gone.

“Hidan is not _my_ problem! Hidan is _Hidan’s_ problem!” she yelled.

“If I didn’t have class today,” Deidara said cheerfully, poking his silky blond head around the door to the lounge room where she was still sprawled on the couch, “I might be able to begin to explain exactly how many problems Hidan is, yeah.”

“Hrrrngghh,” said Sakura, rolling over and burying her face in the couch cushions.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jiraiya gets no respect, Yamato has the plague and Sakura begins lessons in self-defense. Also Naruto makes narutomaki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter makes no sense and exists basically because it is my birthday (as of nine minutes ago) SO I CAN WRITE WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE OKAY. Okay good.

Sakura’s morning shift at TRIVIA was not what she’d come to expect. For a start, when she rolled up the door and headed inside, it was dark and empty. She paused.

She fished her mobile phone out from her bag to call Konan, but found that there was already a message waiting for her.

<FROM: Konan (TRIVIA)  
Timestamp: 4:15 AM  
Message body: Pein’s sick. Open as usual, somebody will be in to make coffee. >

Sakura wondered if 'sick’ was some kind of code for ‘injured in a bloody gang fight’. Ultimately, it seemed better not to ask. It was a good excuse, anyway - there was definitely something going around.

Opening on her own took slightly longer but it was more tedious than difficult. The first customer of the morning was, oddly, Yamato, who arrived with a zombielike shuffle.

“Yamato-sempai!” Sakura started, peering at him from behind the counter. “You look -” she paused. She was about to say ‘terrible,’ but that seemed a little rude.

He looked at her like he’d filled in the rest of the sentence all on his own. His eyes were like huge, black holes, and they were framed by heavy dark circles. His skin was unpleasantly pallid, except for the high colour in his cheeks.

“Sit down,” she said, coming around the counter and drawing him away to a crate that rested against the far wall - it had the benefit of a backrest. “What are you doing here?” she asked, although what she actually meant was ‘what are you doing out of bed?’

“Thesis,” he said in a voice like gravel. “There are some microfilm texts I need in the library basement. I can’t really put it off.” He yawned widely. “Thought I’d come in early when there are fewer people to... talk to, or, you know...” he gestured to himself vaguely, “infect with the plague.”

“How kind,” Sakura cracked a little smile at that. “What can I get you? Our barista’s sick, and I’m still waiting on his replacement, so there’s really no coffee until he or she gets in... Can I get you breakfast? Or tea?”

He squinted at her. “Tea?”

She smiled and hurried off to prepare it.

Since he was the only person in the shop at six o’clock on a Saturday morning, once she’d brought him his tea Sakura perched on the edge of a crate across from him and let him mumble to her about his thesis while she folded takeaway boxes into their correct shapes. She had initially thought his project was about some kind of analysis of clinical data, but it actually turned out that he wasn’t a student of the medical faculty at all.

“I’m with the arts faculty,” he said, shaking his head and then wincing like he regretted the movement. “I’m...” he sighed (sniffily) and poked at his bag somewhat reluctantly. “My thesis is about the ethics of when you get courts of law making decisions about medical treatment.”

“Huh,” she said slowly. That actually sounded pretty interesting - or, well, the abridged version did. Reading a whole thesis on the topic might get old. She supposed that his topic, at least, explained why he was under Kakashi’s supervision - even though it was still kind of ridiculous that Kakashi taught anything to do with ethics.

She opened her mouth to comment but she was interrupted by a sudden bellow of “Employee-san~!” as Jiraiya entered. He breezed through the door, geta clattering, loose clothes swishing. His long, tangled tail of hair followed him like a loyal pet.

Sakura did not have time to brace herself before he grasped her by the shoulders and peered over her at Yamato. “Is this your boy, Sakura-chaaan?” he asked in a whisper that was, in fact, not at all quiet.

She felt her face go red. So did Yamato’s. They glowed the lobster-red of humiliation at each other for just a second.

“No!” Yamato yelled, flailing one arm out defensively. He babbled incoherently for a few moments.

After a few moments, Sakura felt her eyebrows rise. She wasn’t sure that the idea of dating her should evoke quite so much... _distress_.

Yamato must have noticed something in her expression because he fell suddenly and awkwardly silent. “Not that... there would be anything wrong... with that?” he hedged.

Jiraiya laughed. He patted Sakura on the head - messing up her hair completely in the process - and sauntered behind the counter. Soon after came the sounds of the coffee machine waking up.

Shortly after, people began to trickle in and Sakura threw herself into the pattern of work. It was a busy shift with only the two of them, and she didn’t really pause until she glanced at the clock and discovered it was ten in the morning.

That happened fast.

Time did seem to be going faster and faster the closer she got to Sunday, when she would have to either be very sneaky or attend the Nekketsu Dojo for a lesson.

She rubbed her forehead as though it might make her headache go away. It didn’t.

Basically, she determined, it did not matter where she went. Tenten would find her, and then Lee would make her come with them.

She could just picture him apologising with tears streaming down his face while he carried her, tied up and over one shoulder, all the way back to the dojo.

She shuddered.

No, it would be better to plant her feet and stare the crazy people down on her own terms. Even if she resented it.

She was actually more upset about this than she had been about the explosion. Either explosion, actually. She wasn’t sure what that said about her moral character. Nothing good, anyway.

“Are you trying to scrub through that plate, Employee-san?” Jiraiya asked curiously.

Sakura paused and looked down.

He might have been exaggerating, but the plate was definitely very clean. She rinsed and stacked.

“Something bothering you?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Just some friends dragging me off to martial arts training tomorrow, of all things. I’m trying to figure out how to get out of it.”

“Martial arts...?” Jiraiya looked contemplative for a moment. Then he smiled crookedly. “Well, it’s good to learn. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that they’re _insane_ ,” she growled, scrubbing furiously while she glared into the middle distance.

“I think that dish, too, is clean, Employee-san,” Jiraiya commented.

“Oh.” Pause. “Yes, right.” She rinsed it. “When I first moved here,” which wasn’t very long ago, really, “I stayed with some friends at their dojo while I was trying to find a place. They made me get up at five in the morning to go for a run with them every day.”

“Sounds like good incentive to move out,” Jiraiya said with a snort.

“That’s what I thought,” she said sourly, “but then they climbed into my bedroom on the second floor and kidnapped me to go running.”

“...Dedicated,” Jiraiya said slowly.

“You haven’t lived until you’ve been woken at five in the morning by somebody breaking into your house screaming about youth,” Sakura deadpanned. She was surprised at how easy it was to bitch to Jiraiya. He had a strange air about him, one that made her feel willing to confide and oddly safe. Safer, even, than she did with Deidara, who seemed to be less stable the more she knew him.

It was weird, considering that Jiraiya was a member of this hideously illegal smuggling racket she’d apparently fallen in with, and also a complete and unrepentant pervert.

A strange expression crossed Jiraiya’s face. “You wouldn’t happen to be talking about Maito Gai at the Nekketsu Dojo, would you?”

Sakura blinked. She hadn’t realised that he was so weird he was famous, although perhaps she should have. “Yeah,” she said after a surprised pause. “Do you know him?”

Jiraiya shook his head. “Only by reputation. I had an interest in martial arts when I was younger,” he said, dismissing this with a vague hand wave. “I’ll admit that he’s probably as crazy as a tree full of cuttlefish, but he’s very, very good. And he doesn’t take on just anybody, you know.”

He glanced at her sideways as though he was hoping to figure out what it was about Sakura that persuaded Gai to single her out.

It would have been flattering to think that it was because she really was somehow terribly special, but she was pretty sure she was singled out because Gai-sensei’s favourite student had a giant, very terrifying crush on her.

That was somewhat less flattering.

She scowled sourly into her dishwater until Jiraiya ruffled her hair wildly and, cackling, returned to his post at the coffee machine.

Sakura eyed the next customer in line, who was a man in a sharp suit. He was checking his watch every few seconds and tapping his foot. She fought the urge to roll her eyes.

The man heaved a huge, put-upon sigh, as though waiting for another three seconds while Jiraiya finished messing up Sakura’s hair had been the biggest imposition he’d experienced ever. If he thought acting like a passive-aggressive, entitled asshole would have some kind of impact on Jiraiya’s behaviour...

Well, Sakura supposed he was probably right.

But she doubted that he’d get the effect he was hoping for.

“Are you _trying_ to make me late?” he asked Jiraiya bitingly. Not so passive-aggressive then. Sakura glided over to collect his money and give out his change.

“Not if I’m succeeding,” Jiraiya said cheerfully, handing him a takeaway cup of coffee that Sakura was willing to bet was just a little too hot.

She gave the man his change and turned away before he could complain to her.

“That’s not a really good way to deal with customers,” she pointed out quietly after Entitled-san had left.

“Do you think other customers enjoy sitting next to people like that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. “TRIVIA’s a relaxed place and our regulars are good people. We don’t put up with that kind of bullshit.”

“You’re the owner, Owner-san,” Sakura said dubiously, and shrugged.

“Nice of somebody to remember,” he responded, not unhappily.

* * *

 

Sunday happened.

Sakura started off feeling a lot as though Sunday was a thing that was happening to her, a terrible temporal experience enacted on her person against her will.

She woke at five to five in the morning to a crash and Deidara yelling at Hidan. Her first thought was that it was strange how Hidan bellowed and shrieked - his voice could change rapidly between an intimidating thunder and a kind of blood-curdling noise that, if she was absolutely honest, sounded a little like a cross between poorly played bagpipes and a kettle boiling over. But with more laughing.

Deidara, on the other hand, sounded like Deidara. But louder. A lot louder. Deidara had the capacity to be about as loud as the launch of a small space shuttle. And, if he was really upset, his voice got this awful scraped-raw tone in it that made it sound like he was about to start frothing at the mouth and clawing off somebody’s face.

Sakura blinked uncertainly at the ceiling of her room. All the light came from the faint stars outside her balcony door, which just left the place full of odd shapes and shadows.

It took her a good minute to really contemplate that Hidan and Deidara were probably arguing about something, and that if she paid attention she could find out what. Such arguments were common, but not before five in the morning.

If she’d been asked, Sakura would actually have said that Deidara didn’t know what five in the morning was, except when he’d stayed up all night.

There was a meaty _thunk_ against the other side of the wall.

In the yelling and swearing, Sakura caught something about Deidara’s hair.

Ah, she thought.

She rolled over.

They’d sort it out.

...

Her alarm went off.

Sakura heaved a huge sigh. Nekketsu Dojo. Right.

She rolled out of bed, pulled on some comfortable clothes and her sneakers, and then stumbled out of her bedroom. There was a long, dragging streak of blood on the floor of the corridor, and Sakura squinted at it for a second, trying to figure out how much blood had been lost.

She didn’t think it was enough to be worried about, so she ignored the yelling and headed out to catch the earliest bus that would take her past the Nekketsu Dojo.

It was nearly daylight when she arrived. There were few cars on the road and the shopping complex across the street was empty and dark. The Dojo looked astonishingly peaceful in the cool pre-dawn light, all plants and low wooden construction.

Sakura paused and checked her phone, because it was strangely... silent.

Gai-sensei and Lee had usually finished their run and moved on to training by now, which was never, ever silent.

She hesitated.

She checked the text from Tenten to make sure she’d arrived at the right time after all.

Finally, she crept into the dojo...

...and walked straight into the middle of what seemed to be a very serious staring match. She could almost hear the dramatic music, and she could certainly see the tears welling up in Gai-sensei’s eyes, which were no doubt burning.

The other competitor in this stupidest of contests was Kakashi.

Her _teacher_ Kakashi.

What the _hell_?

“What are you doing here?” Sakura asked. It came out flat but it was at least a hell of a lot politer than what was happening in her head.

Gai-sensei whirled. “Sakura-san!”

Kakashi-sensei smiled under his scarf. “Ne,” he said casually, “Does that count as a blink?”

“For the sake of expediency,” murmured Neji, who was sitting seiza off to one side, examining the contest with pale, blank eyes. “I’ll allow it.”

“Thank _god_ ,” muttered Tenten, over the sudden sound of Lee erupting into distress and tears over his mentor’s terrible defeat.

Kakashi got to his feet slowly.

Gai-sensei gave Sakura the single most mournful look she’d ever seen on a human being before. “Sakura-san,” he said in a trembling voice, “through weakness I have failed you. I promise it will not happen again. Next time you see me, I will be a stronger man,” he said with bright determination in his eyes.

It was way, way too early for this.

There was a silence.

“Wait, what?”

Kakashi stretched his shoulders with a crack. “Maa... Well, nice to see you, Gai. I’ll be taking my student and leaving now,” he said cheerfully.

Gai-sensei made a choked noise. Or maybe it was Lee.

Kakashi took a firm grip on Sakura’s elbow and pulled her back through the door of the Nekketsu Dojo. He didn’t let go even as he steered her down the footpath. Kakashi completely ignored Sakura’s half-sensible questioning and just prodded her down the street. They turned two corners.

“I had no idea you had an interest in martial arts, Student-san,” Kakashi said, tugging her toward a pedestrian crossing.

“I don’t,” she said flatly.

“That’s nice,” he told her. Then: “Here we are!” Across the road was an old, solid house, which gave the impression of stately disrepair - old money gone to seed.

The wall outside was tall, the gate was locked, and the intercom next to the entry had a giant ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign on it. The graffiti on that outside wall was largely rude, but somebody had painted a white swathe through the layers of sexually explicit instructions and written over it in thick black block letters: ‘Can This Be The Wall We Put The Pigs Up Against?’ The ‘A’ in ‘against’ was circled to create a clumsy anarchist sign, which was...

...weird.

“Where is ‘here’?” she wondered, eyeing it suspiciously.

He unlocked the gate and persuaded her through.

There was a terrible thunder of paws and booming barks, and then eight dogs of all different sizes sprinted forward to mill enthusiastically around Kakashi’s legs. None of them leapt up, but they did seem to to their level best to knock him over by leaning heavily against him and wagging their tails with such frantic fury it was a wonder they didn’t sprain anything.

“I’ve been gone thirty minutes,” Kakashi told them drily. He was met with a chorus of whines.

“Is this your _house_?” Sakura yelled.

Kakashi turned a cynical eye on her. “Keep up, Student-san,” he drawled. “I was promised somebody smart.”

She had no idea how she found herself in Kakashi-sensei’s back yard, barefoot and angry, while be beamed at her from behind his mask and told her “Let’s start with teaching you how to fall!” with a note of glee.

By the time Sunday was more or less over, Sakura didn’t really feel like a person. She felt like a giant sack of pain and twitching, trembling muscles with all their strength played out. And sweat. Couldn’t forget the sweat.

She wasn’t even sure how this had happened to her. Kakashi had the knack of steamrolling over her questions and dismissing her objections with a vague hand wave.

“Gai lost the contest,” he said with a lazy half-shrug when she finally managed to persuade him to answer her. “So you’re my student now, Student-san. Work hard, ne?”

She glowered at him.

The dogs watched them, tails wagging and tongues lolling.

She was pretty sure they were judging her.

At dusk - _dusk_ , seriously, and she was hungry and exhausted and the water she‘d had was not enough at all, because _dusk_ , for pity's sake - he let her out, guiding her once again with a firm hand on her arm.

“I’ll see you at four o’clock tomorrow, Student-san,” Kakashi said with a terrible insincere cheer in his voice.

“Four o’ - You have a _class_ at five!” she growled.

Kakashi waved this away cheerfully. “Don’t be late,” he advised her, and then slammed the gate in her face.

 

* * *

 

The bus ride home was a sleepy one. Sakura checked her phone as she leaned her face against the window, right in the grease smear from previous passenger’s unwashed hair. Whatever, she was going to have to spend like an hour scrubbing all the sweat and dirt away when she got home anyway.

  
<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 6:32 AM  
Message body: That was unexpected. Are you still alive? We have theories about Kakashi-san, and now you’ve been behind enemy lines. Info exchange&run, 5:15 Tuesday.>

Strangely, jogging at stupid o’clock in the morning with Tenten was becoming... not exactly pleasant, but less awful than she’d initially found it. It certainly woke her up. By comparison to what she’d done today, jogging in intervals for an hour seemed blissful.

<To: Tenten  
Timestamp: 6:42 PM  
Message body: if I can move at all on Tuesday it’s a date.>

<To: Tenten   
Timestamp: 6:42 PM  
Message body: COME ALONE.>

She tapped again. Next.

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 11:15 AM  
Message body: I AM THE KING OF RAMEN HEAR ME ROAR.jpg>

The picture was of a slightly wonky narutomaki on top of a sloppily arranged bowl of noodles and broth. Sakura snorted.

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 11:16 AM  
Message body: Ne, ne, Sakuuura-chaaan, I minced twenty kilos of fish! And then rinsed it. And then rinsed it again. And then mashed it up. Kamaboko are 100% made from the tears of apprentice RAMEN chefs. :C >

Sakura was going to ignore the way Naruto’s phone had started auto-correcting ‘ramen’ to allcaps. She didn’t have the energy to think about it.

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 11:46 AM  
Message body: they’re really good tho. Are you jealous? bet you’re jealous. I sent the picture to Bastard twenty-three times but he hasn’t replied >

Well, no, Sakura mused. He probably wouldn’t. What Sasuke _would_ do if he decided to take retribution was anybody’s guess.

Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to Naruto’s texts. In person, she might just heave a put-upon sigh and smack him in the head if he got too enthused - but that wasn’t really an option in text form, and tone didn’t carry as well in writing. It was too easy to misunderstand her meaning without context and body language.

<To: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 6:45 PM  
Message body: Now we know what suffering tastes like. A contribution to science. Also no, I am totally not jealous of the guy who had to mince 20kg of fish, ew, gross. No. D: >

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:17 PM  
Message body: Are you dead? The only time I hear from you is at freaking one in the morning. Did you drop off the face of the planet?>

Sakura raised an eyebrow at the phone.

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:46 PM  
Message body: Still alive. First self-defence lesson today. Everything hurts. Send help.>

She took a photo of her face, which was smudged with dirt, bright red from exertion, and streaked with sweat. So flattering.

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:47 PM  
Message body: thisismyscaryface.jpg >

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:47 PM  
Message body: what happened re: flute girl?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:50 PM  
Message body: that angle makes your forehead look huge.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:50 PM  
Message body: oh wait no that’s just your face. Your face clashes with your hair. Sexy.>

Sakura snorted in a way that was distinctly unladylike.

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:51 PM  
Message body: i told her the rope-belt thing was stupid and she stole half my clothes and put them in charity donation. when i asked for them back everyone looked at me like i was trying to steal from war orphans or something>

Sakura read this with slowly rising eyebrows. She whistled between her teeth.

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 6:51 PM  
Message body: She’ll get hers.>

Yeah, Sakura was kind of glad she didn’t go to the same university as Ino. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.

 

* * *

 

On Monday, Sakura ached in places she’d never even contemplated aching before. Her body had made contact with the ground a lot, and her hands were scraped raw from trying to slap it away from her face. 

She stretched, but didn’t feel as though it was doing her much good.

She’d managed, at a scramble, to keep up with her school work over the weekend - a miracle in itself, really - and she understood most of her classes, which was regrettably the high point of her day.

Of course Kakashi was late. Sakura amused herself by doing homework outside the gate of his house, and then when it got too dark, she shoved her hand between the bars and petted the fuzzy little dog that had come to stare out at her.

She thought the dog was a pug, or at least mostly pug. He was so ugly he’d basically come the full circle and become cute again. His ears were unbearably silky. She rubbed them until he leaned, hazy-eyed against the gate in an attempt to give her better access.

She could go home, she supposed. Kakashi was a jerk and definitely deserved it. Also, at no point had she really _agreed_ to become his student. She had been expecting Gai-sensei’s peculiar brand of weirdness, not... whatever this was.

She stayed.

“You’re late,” she told Kakashi when he showed up, finally, at a quarter past six. Today he was wearing an actual honest-to-god mask, and she decided she wasn’t even touching that topic.

Kakashi was weird in ways that made Gai-sensei look normal.

“Turns out,” murmured Kakashi, opening the gate. “I had to teach a class.”

The first thing the pug did was fling himself out to greet Kakashi, following which he clambered into Sakura’s lap and did not move. She picked him up more or less without thinking about it, cuddling him to her chest as she followed her teacher inside.

“You -” Sakura made a noise like a broken hinge. “You had to teach a class. You _never_ show up to class. Are you just doing this to screw with me?” her voice hit a different note, low and angry.

“Maa, maa, Student-san. So suspicious.” He held up his hands for peace, and then commenced with petting the horde of dogs that swarmed out to meet him.

“Yamato-kun has the flu,” he drawled, as though Yamato becoming sick was a product of the universe conspiring to ruin Kakashi’s life.

Sakura opened her mouth to point out that actually Yamato did not teach any of Kakashi’s classes because they were _Kakashi’s_ classes, but she couldn’t really see it ending anywhere good. She puffed out her cheeks and let out a long breath instead. Calm thoughts. Caaaalm thoughts.

The pug whimpered in her grip. Sakura quickly let him down, cooing an apology. He didn’t seem too bothered once he had all four tiny paws firmly on the ground, and instead darted off to bite the back leg of the lanky, greyhound-looking dog. A squabble broke out, and the room filled with the noises of playful growling and thumping tails.

Kakashi drew her outside and held up a tennis ball, smiling beneath his mask. He had, Sakura realised after a second, a _lot_ of tennis balls.

She took a hesitant step back.

His smile got wider.

Oh, god.

“Today’s lesson’s going to be on dodging,” he told her, which was absolutely what she was dreading he’d been about to say.

Kakashi was a monster. There was no way she was going to be able to explain any of the blooming tennis-ball sized bruises, and by the time he let her go - which was three hours later - there were plenty of them in places that regular clothing would leave visible.

She sank to the ground as soon as he allowed her to, breathing heavily and feeling like all her limbs were made of wibbly-wobbly jelly.

A tennis ball smacked into her forehead.

Sakura picked up the ball and gripped it in her hand, glowering at him. There were lights on outside, but it was still dark, and his expression had become difficult to judge through the mask.

He laughed at her, though, and that made it a little easier. “Consider yourself lucky, Student-san. My teacher used golf balls.”

Sakura hurled the tennis ball back at him and of course he dodged it, shifting his weight just the tiniest amount.

Something in her brain snapped and Sakura screamed at him about his unhygienic habits, dubious parenthood, moral fibre and intelligence until she was pretty sure she sounded exactly like Hidan.

“I give you an A+ for creativity, but a C for delivery,” he said, and came over to draw her to her feet. His grip was very strong. She kind of hated him, but she let him help her up. It was his fault her whole body was broken and aching anyway.

Kakashi poked, prodded and persuaded her in the general direction of his door. “I’ll see you Thursday,” he said before he closed it in her face.

“What if I just don’t show up?” she muttered at the door.

“Do you want to find out?” his voice came from behind the door.

She gave it a long, suspicious look.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which any number of people have no social skills, an offer is made, and Sakura discovers that she is already in way over her head.

After leaving Kakashi’s house, Sakura did not even make it onto the bus.

She was at the corner of the main road, barely a block away from the Nekketsu Dojo, less than a kilometer from Kakashi’s place. In hindsight, she was _so close_ to safety. The irony was almost painful.

All she knew at the time was that she was exhausted and her muscles were shaking like they wanted to give out. Everything hurt, it was dark, she was dirty and bruised, and all she wanted was to go home and sleep it off.

After all that practice with dodging, she never even saw it coming: one moment she was contemplating where her pass for the bus might be hidden inside her bag, the next she was choking on the thick, rotting-sweet fumes of a rag soaked in chloroform.

Panic made her breathe faster, but heavy hands on her arms held her steady. Sakura’s hearing went faint, her vision wobbled - and then her blood pressure dropped with a heady, dizzying rush that made everything go grey.

 

* * *

 

  
Sakura woke in the back of a car, feeling weak and woozy. She was face-up, and she could see street lights casting flickering bands of light across the interior. They were moving fast.

“You’re awake, Sakura-san?” said a pleasantly neutral voice.

Sakura didn’t recognise it, which made it tragically unlikely that she’d been kidnapped by one of her admittedly socially impaired housemates.

She’d been knocked out and dumped in the back of a running car. There were only so many ways this scenario could go, and she really didn’t like any of them. Anxiety throbbed in her stomach.

She grunted unhappily and squinted her eyes.

“You’re not...” she trailed off hazily. She’d been about to say 'Sasuke’, but the resemblance was superficial at best: dark hair, dark eyes, pretty face. His skin was so white he looked almost like a ghost.

He looked oddly familiar.

“You’re...” His face broke into the least sincere smile ever and Sakura ground her teeth reflexively. “I punched you in the face,” she said flatly, blinking as she tried to kick her brain into gear.

“Sai,” he said, eyes crinkling obnoxiously as his smile widened.

Sai. She remembered now. She sat up properly, peering outside the window. Everything was going by fast and she didn’t recognise the buildings flashing past the car. Her door was locked from the inside - she could unlock it, but to what end? They were moving too fast, and the road was almost deserted.

“Where are we?” she demanded.

“Sakura-san,” said Sai. “Please pay attention.”

She turned a glower on him, balling her hands into fists. She’d punched him before, and she could probably do it again. She glanced toward the driver of the car, but all she could see were indicator lights on the dash and a pair of hands.

Could she overpower one or both of them?

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Sai said pleasantly. “You caught me by surprise in the art room, Sakura-san - although you shouldn’t have, given who you associate with. I made a mistake,” he admitted candidly. There was a pause. “But you really are weak, Sakura-san.”

The words ‘given who you associate with’ made her heart kick into high gear. That meant that Sai knew who she lived with. This was going downhill fast.

How many career criminals _went_ to Senjuu, anyway? Was there some kind of aptitude test in the scholarship application form?

For a moment she contemplated finding her phone and smacking whatever speed-dial button was easiest, but then she noticed that it was in one of Sai’s hands, well out of reach.

Sakura felt distinctly out of options.

“Fine. What do you want?” she asked, tossing her head back to get her hair out of her eyes. She did her best to sound angry, because if she didn’t sound angry she was sure to sound frightened.

Sai tilted his head, examining her for a second. She was probably quite a sight: filthy, bruised, exhausted, red-faced from her exertions - and now with the added appeal of a faintly hungover look.

Happily, Sai didn‘t have the social skills to draw his explanation out for intimidation value. He was to the point. “I’m here to make you an offer,” he said directly.

She felt faintly queasy. An offer? That sounded... ominous.

“It’s been noticed that you have moved into your new living arrangement on a more or less permanent basis. In the interests of peaceful cooperation,” he added, sounding as though it was rehearsed, as though 'peaceful cooperation’ did not actually mean anything to him at all. “I’ve been asked to suggest that you observe your housemates and report on their movements.”

 _Report on their movements,_ she mouthed to herself. She felt very close to throwing up. “I don’t...” her voice caught. Sai’s smile left her with no clues as to how he’d respond to her refusal, but gangster movies suggested to Sakura that really terrible things would probably happen to her. She didn’t _know_.

It was the first time ever that Sakura had thought _gee, I wish I had more experience with negotiations between rival criminal gangs_. She had a moment of hysterical reflection. How was this even her life?

She swallowed the bile that was seeping over her tongue. “You want me to, what, spy on them? Tell you what they get up to?”

“Information is very valuable,” he said, smiling. “He said to say we’d pay you accordingly,” he added.

“Who’s ‘he’?” Sakura wondered, stalling.

Sai shook his head but said nothing. He smiled.

She should have expected as much.

Outside her window, the landscape was changing. Instead of tall buildings there was a strange stretch of suburbia - fenced in houses, green nature strips, smooth foot paths. God, where were they even going?

“So?” he prompted. “Will you do it?”

She took a deep breath. In the end, it wasn‘t even really a question. She was certain of her choice before she said it. She wasn’t certain if she should tell the truth or lie through her teeth: “No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Really?” Sai asked, bland and pleasant. “It’s usually the longevity of an emotional bond that fosters attachment like this,” he said, sounding like he was quoting from a text book. “You haven’t known them very long. In response to the positive stimulus of a reward such as money, it would be common for a person to abandon such a weak bond.”

Sakura said nothing.

Her thoughts whirled. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should just agree.

But then he’d want to contact her, and she’d be in danger from her own housemates and... God, what a mess. She felt like it would only be getting herself in deeper. Gang business was just something she didn’t want to know anything about.

“Do you need more money?” he asked after a second, sounding puzzled, and god, wasn’t he the creepiest guy ever. He was all the creepiness of Hidan and Zetsu combined and multiplied by a factor of Madara.

She shook her head silently.

Sai nodded thoughtfully.

He was still smiling when he reached out, grabbed her hand and snapped two of her fingers.

Sakura yelped, more out of shock than pain. Her fingers were -

Her fingers were at the wrong angle.

She couldn’t process it for a few long seconds.

Her fingers were _broken_. Like that. No hesitation, no thought. _Snap_.

Then, swiftly, pain asserted itself, an astonishing deep throb that seemed to vibrate all the way to her shoulder.

“What the hell!" she shrieked and yanked her hand away, tucking it close to her stomach.

He’d just - he’d just _broken her fingers_. She clenched her jaw to stem her swearing. Everything was a horrible whirl of thundering blood and too-quick breathing and pain in her hand.

“How about now?” he asked, still smiling.

He was crazy. Absolutely fucking insane. There was no way in hell she’d help this lunatic with _anything_.

Anger made her brave. “Fuck you,” she spat.

“Literally that phrase is an offer of copulation, but figuratively it is used to denote extreme disgust,” he mused. “Hm, so neither reward nor punishment is likely to be effective.” His voice sounded thoughtful, like he was contemplating the weather.

“No,” she said, fists clenched, glowering mightily. “No, it won’t.” She was filled with energy despite her weariness, a hot rush of adrenalin that made her want to _move_ , to claw and scream and hit. The urge to hurt him - in some way, some desperate, unthinking way - was very nearly overwhelming.

She didn’t. She knew it was too dangerous. He wasn’t alone - the driver was there - and he was in control of the situation. She couldn’t. She sat straight and met his eyes anyway.

The expression of insincere cheer dropped away from Sai’s face, leaving it pretty but empty. It was like watching shutters close behind his eyes, thoughts and feelings draining away until there was nothing there at all.

His gaze was indifferent and measuring.

There was some hind-brain knowledge in Sakura, something instinctive and animal, that began to blare a warning. She met his eyes and all she could think was that he was going to hurt her, maybe kill her.

She was going to be hurt, terribly, and she needed to escape somehow.

Panic gave her an odd clarity and focus.

An option presented itself.

It... was a really stupid idea.

Sakura wasn’t sure when she’d ever had an idea so colossally stupid.

If she thought about it, she’d never do it. So she didn’t think: she acted. She reached behind her and unlocked her door.

Sai’s dark eyes widened. Surprise flickered across his face - the first honest feeling she’d seen. He was younger than she’d thought.

“Fuck you,” Sakura said again in a terrifying flash of bravado. Then she shoved the door open - wide open - and hurled herself out the back of the car.

Kakashi probably hadn’t envisaged his falling lessons being used for this, but at least she had some idea as to how to protect her head and roll with her momentum. There was a squeal of breaks, a startled yell from inside the car, the blare of a horn from another car in the sparse flow of traffic --

The ground hurtled toward her.

 _Ow_.

The impact hurt. An awful noise was torn from her, and Sakura threw herself into the roll like her life depended on it - which, to be fair, it probably did.

She could feel the bitumen ripping across her skin - something _sharp_ seared a dull line down her arm - then the shoulder of the road smacked into her. There was a tumbling rush of uneven grasses and dirt that only slightly cushioned her.

She came to a halt when she smacked into somebody’s fence. It was only as the shadows of traffic flicked past her in the glow of a street light that Sakura realised precisely how close she’d come to being hit by a car.

She blinked toward the road, but all signs of Sai had disappeared - their car must have been pulled along in the flow of traffic.

Her heart thundered. Everything seemed very distant. The sky above was a matte black, stars almost invisible against the brightness of the street lights.

Okay.

What now?

She had to move, she decided. As long as she got moving now, she could be out of sight before Sai and his mystery driver had a chance to turn around.

Sakura stumbled to her feet and let herself in through the gate of some nice suburban home. The gate swung closed behind her, which at least blocked her from the sight of the road, and left her facing a small, modern home with windows glowing a cheery yellow and pretty flat stones forming a path through the neatly-trimmed garden.

Okay. She examined herself.

There was very little of Sakura that didn’t hurt. In particular there was an ugly gash on her arm and shoulder where she’d hit the road, and it was bleeding enthusiastically. One of her ankles was protesting any time she put any weight on it. There were patches on her legs and back where her clothes had torn and her skin looked like she’d lost a fight with a cheese grater.

The bruises from practice with Kakashi were the least of her problems now.

Grimly, Sakura marched - or, well, stumbled - toward the door. She didn’t doubt that she’d terrify whoever answered, but she really didn’t have any other options. She knocked.

The man who answered stared at her for five whole seconds in silence. He was middle-aged, slightly stooped, hair thinning on top. He wore a cardigan and glasses with heavy frames, and looked much too unassuming to be faced with a bleeding teenager at stupid o’clock in the night.

“Um," he stopped. He didn’t really say anything.

“I’m sorry,” she said reflexively. Then she swallowed. “There was...” Sakura paused. “A car,” she said finally. It was even true. Just let him think she‘d been hit and gotten off lucky. “Can I use your phone?”

He opened the door to let her in.

The foyer was tiled and dark, but noises from deeper inside the house told her that there were other people still awake.

“Come in,” he said belatedly.

“Uh,” she said, looking down. “I’m dripping. I might - the tiles will be easier to clean up.” It was the golden rule of bloodstains, and one which she’d learned very quickly from Hidan.

Even if he hadn’t really gone out of his way to teach her.

The man blinked at her, like what she’d said was somehow strange instead of very practical, but then he nodded and hurried away.

A few moments later she had a towel wrapped around the gash on her arm, supplying pressure to stem the steady bleeding. She was still getting a few drops of blood on the tiles of the man’s entryway, but he didn’t seem too bothered by it - at least, not the cleanliness of it - when he handed her a smart phone and went digging for a first aid kit.

Once the phone was in her hand, Sakura wasn’t quite sure who to call. She didn’t want to call an ambulance, because telling them she got hit by a car seemed likely to end in a police investigation. That seemed like it would be a very bad idea.

She should call one of her housemates, she supposed. This was clearly gang business, and they’d know what to do. Surely.

She knew the TRIVIA phone number, but there was no way anybody would be there at eleven o’clock at night, unless there was some kind of hush-hush gang meeting going on. Which, really? How often were there secret gang meetings? She didn’t even know.

Maybe she could use a search engine? But surely nobody would have their mobile phone number on the Internet, it wasn’t like any of them was publicising a self-run business, or -

Well. Actually.

There was one person.

Sakura _really_ didn’t want to call him.

She tried to think of another plan, but nothing was forthcoming. She couldn’t think. She was bleeding and her mind was drawing a blank on all other options.

There was a noise as she stupidly contemplated the phone in her hand. When she looked up, a tiny child peered around a doorway, huge eyes fixed on Sakura’s form standing in the foyer of their home bleeding all over the place with her clothes ripped to shit and her hair in disarray.

Great. Now she was traumatising children.

Dammit.

She tapped her query into Google and rang the number that came up, trying to avoid getting bloody smears on the poor man’s phone. Having committed to her course of action, Sakura had the sudden awful thought that maybe he wouldn’t pick up.

She closed her eyes, focusing on the sound of ringing. Two rings. Three rings. Five rings.

She let it keep going.

“You’ve called Uchiha Madara, illusionist and magician extraordinaire. Leave a message.”

“Dammit,” she growled, probably into his messagebank, and hung up.

Then she called again.

And _again_.

She knew her mother’s number by heart, but calling her to let her know she was injured and could she please come back from the USA to pick her up was...

No.

Definitely not.

The only other number Sakura knew from memory was Ino’s, which...

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” she muttered. Later she’d be horrified by how hard she was hoping to hear Madara’s stupid creepy voice.

Her host had returned, and was watching her with an unreadable expression. His first aid kit seemed to consist of some alcohol wipes, some antiseptic, a few bandages and some paracetamol. Better than nothing, she supposed, eyeing it as she listened to the phone ring.

“What?” snapped a voice. “Seriously, did you not hear the answering machine the first time?”

Sakura’s knees went weak with relief. “Hidan!”

There was a pause.

“Fucking - Where the hell are you?”

“There was an accident. I need somebody to pick me up, I -” she looked at the man standing awkwardly in the doorway. “What’s the address here?”

“And you called _Madara_?” Hidan interrupted loudly. He sounded like she’d exceeded all possibilities of stupidity he’d ever even contemplated. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

“I don’t have my phone, his number’s online,” she snapped back. Her host gave her the address, and she rattled it off to Hidan. “I need somebody to pick me up. Can you --?”

There was a pause. For the first time, she realised that Hidan was out somewhere: she could hear the voices of a milling crowd in the background. “Are you fucking serious? I’m at work!”

Sakura didn’t even know what ‘work’ was for Hidan, other than crazy gang stuff. She made a distressed noise. “I am bleeding all over a stranger’s floor, I don’t care, just _send somebody._ ”

He swore at her. Then she heard him bellow over the sounds of the crowd, and a responding yell, and then a clatter. “Fuck,” he muttered, just loud enough for the speaker to pick up. “We’ll be there.”

“When?” she asked urgently.

“When we fucking get there!” He snapped back and then the line went dead.

Sakura had gotten blood on the screen by holding it up to her face, so she tried to find a clean place on her clothes to wipe off that spot. Then, feeling vaguely guilty, she returned the phone to the owner of the house.

“I’m really sorry,” she said.

“Is somebody coming to get you?” he asked as though he hadn’t heard her.

“I... yes,” she nodded. “I can - I can wait outside, if you want,” she suggested. “In the garden?”

He looked at her, and then over his shoulder into the warmly-lit room where the child had come from. He opened his mouth and then said nothing.

“I think I’d feel better waiting in the front,” she admitted, following his gaze. She would, too. The night air was cold and her skin was bare, but...

She couldn’t shake the feeling that Sai would be looking for her. She wanted open spaces in case she needed to run, and she definitely didn’t want to get these people involved.

He nodded.

She ended up standing in his grass, away from the pools of light cast by the family’s cheery windows. She started with her senses on high alert, but after a few minutes she sagged against the tree in one corner of the yard.

She could see the curtains flicker every so often, faces peering out to find out whether or not she was still there. The family wanted nothing to do with her, obviously, and could hardly wait for her to leave. She didn’t blame them in the slightest.

She should treat her injuries, at least a little, she thought.

She couldn’t muster the energy to deal with the scrapes and bruises. Changing the pressure on her shoulder hurt, but once she’d settled on the amount of force to use and kept it steady, it was like her body adjusted. The bleeding was stemming, slowly, at least.

It only took ten or fifteen minutes before a car drew up to the curb and the gate rattled. Sakura’s nerves weren’t up to it. She made a noise of surprise and distress, something perilously close to a whimper, and inched closer to the tree.

“Sakura-chaaaan,” yelled a voice, too loud, too cheerful, too - too much. She had never been so happy to hear anybody’s voice in her life.

Relief was heady. She felt like her insides had turned to water and wobbled when she made her way toward the sound.

The fence was tall enough that Tobi’s eyes could just peer over it at her when she approached.

His silly smile faded a little. “Hidan-san didn’t say Sakura-chan was hurt,” he said, pushing the gate inward.

His eyes lingered on the towel. It was a pale blue, and the blood stood out starkly.

There was movement at the door behind her, and Tobi leaned through the gate and waved. “Thank you, jii-san!” he called cheerfully.

Hesitantly, the man lifted his hand in response.

Tobi beamed.

Then he closed the gate with a snap, put his hand on the first uninjured patch of skin he could find (which was her other shoulder), and hustled her toward Madara’s van. The painted letters on the side gleamed in the street light.

If Sakura wasn’t so relieved to be getting a lift anywhere, she might have just refused to get inside that hideous, garish thing.

Tobi helped her carefully into the van as though she was made of something terribly, terribly breakable, and then bounded around to the other side to hop in the driver’s seat. “Don’t worry, Sakura-chan,” he assured her brightly, “Tobi is a much safer driver than Deidara-sempai!”

Sakura had not been worried at all until he’d mentioned that, but he chattered while he drove the car neatly into the flow of traffic, and nothing he did seemed horribly dangerous - although, to be fair, unless it was extremely obvious, Sakura would not have noticed.

She was busy staring at her (scraped, red-raw) hand on her (battered, sluggishly bleeding) knee.

“Tobi-san,” she said, interrupting a cheerful rant about - possibly - the best way to make sponge cake, “I jumped out of a moving car.”

There was a short pause.

“Ehh?” his voice rose. “Sakura-chan is so _brave_!” He let go of the steering wheel to hug her tightly for a second, causing her to yelp both in pain and because he’d taken all of his attention off the road.

“No, no!” she yelled, shoving at him with her good arm. “No, oh my god, _drive_ , Tobi-san, don’t hug me!”

“Eh? Ahh!” He flailed for a second and then grabbed the wheel again. He pressed one hand to his chest and straightened out the van on the road. “That was close. Good thing Sakura-chan was here!”

Sakura re-adjusted her towel and pressed it down again, wincing at the pressure. Her good arm, she discovered all of a sudden, was the one with the broken fingers. She swore, cringing.

Her fingers were swelling and discoloured.

She was starting to sound like Hidan. Oh, god, no.

She tuned out Tobi’s rambling, unable to find the energy to amuse him. He was doing an okay job of it himself, she thought.

She looked back at her lap. Her hands had started to tremble.

Actually, all of her had started to tremble. She was shaking.

She felt really cold.

She’d been drugged, kidnapped, threatened -

She’d jumped out of a moving car.

A  _car_. 

With the hand of her injured arm, she covered her mouth like she could stop the noise that escaped.

“Sakura-chan?” Tobi’s childish voice asked curiously.

“I’m fine, Tobi-san,” she said automatically, staring straight ahead. A second later her frame lurched with a sob. “Everything’s over,” she said in a hard voice. “It’s okay.”

That didn’t stop the shaking, and it didn’t prevent the crying a few moments later, either. She didn’t feel sad or upset or anything that would usually prompt crying - it was as though her body was divorced from all her other feelings and she couldn’t prevent it.

Her helpless crying jag didn’t produce neat, ladylike tears, either: she sobbed and got everything snotty and shook with the pressure of it.

Curiously, Tobi didn’t seem to panic about it. She half-expected that he would wave his arms and yell and demand to know if she was going to be all right, but he didn’t do any of those things. He just drove.

It was almost a half hour before they got back to the share house, and when they did it was to Madara waiting outside, a looming, wild-haired silhouette beneath a street lamp.

He was dressed for a performance, dolled up in a black waistcoat and red shirtsleeves with a top hat tucked beneath one arm.

“I’m back, Madara-sama~” Tobi crowed, leaping out of the driver’s seat and handing Madara back his keys.

Sakura was finally dry-eyed, but she was sure she looked a fright. She carefully got out of the van, wincing when dried blood made the seat peel away from the backs of her legs painfully.

“Oh, no,” Madara said facetiously, ignoring Tobi, and eyed Sakura intently. “Sakura-san’s been hurt.” His voice indicated that he thought that was titillating in some way that seemed extremely creepy.

He smiled at her.

She should be polite, or at least scared, but... she couldn’t. She just... couldn’t. “Hello, Madara-san,” she said flatly, and walked straight past him. Her keys, at least, were in her pocket, even if her phone had been in Sai’s stupid hands.

Tobi blinked. “Ne, Sakura-chan -?”

“Thanks, Tobi-san,” she called over her shoulder, and closed the door behind her.

The sounds of the night outside were muted, and everything smelled like home: a mixture of coffee and machine oil, old injuries, sweet shampoo - things that reminded Sakura of each of her housemates. It made her feel oddly safe.

Bickering from down the hall let her know that Deidara and Sasori were still up, and the sounds of the shower from upstairs meant that Hidan was home from work - he must work with Madara at his shows, somehow, she thought uncertainly.

On one hand, she wanted to rush to Deidara and tell him everything and bask in his concerned, friendly attention.

But she also didn’t want to listen to him getting upset about her injuries, not out of some misplaced desire not to bother him with it but - well, Deidara was kind of dramatic. She didn’t have the energy or the attention span to deal with him.

She just wanted to get patched up and go to bed.

Sakura crept past the sounds of bickering. She didn’t draw Deidara’s notice, but she was fairly certain she saw Sasori’s languid eyes drift in her direction. He didn’t mention anything to Deidara, though, much to her relief.

The first floor corridor was quiet and clean, and she could hear the sounds of her shoes on the floor as she padded down it.

She knocked on Kakuzu’s door.

It took him a few minutes, but he opened it. His hair was loose and his eyes were blurry with recent sleep and she could see every inch of scar tissue on his torso. On another night, this would have been fascinating.

“Hi,” she said. “Can you give me a hand?”

He looked her up and down. Self-consciously, she thought she must look terrible.

Kakuzu grunted and opened the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was probably not as funny as you might have been expecting! But, well, I am writing a story about gangsters here. Keep in mind that there is basically no forward-planned plot, and the characters are not likely to have the same relationships they do in canon. That said, I am trying to keep them more or less as IC as is possible for an AU. ( ~~And, okay, canon Sakura? Canon Sakura responds to stress by _being more badass_.~~ )
> 
> Next chapter will hopefully be more fun that way. I'm hoping I get to write more shenanigans with Hidan and/or Zetsu, and Kakashi's awkward stalking behaviour (somebody should talk to him about that, seriously), Sakura finally getting around to reading _Icha Icha Paradise_ , etc. etc. But these are hopes, because, uh, as I said: plot? What is this "plot" you speak of?
> 
> I love reading your comments guys, they make me really happy - and they also make me feel like AO3 has, like, an awesome community of cool people. Wheee. :D
> 
> Lastly, if you're interested, I made a tumblr recently. It is for random fandom things, fanfic writing feels, things about history, nonsensical excerpts that didn't make it into actual fic (boo!), cuddles, glitter, weird thoughts, lit geekery and some random history stuff, etc., etc. It's over at http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com/, and you are welcome to check it out or follow it - although admittedly there is legitimately _nothing interesting_ over there. I'm just a bandwagon-jumping enthusiast.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura misses a lot of texts, gang names are discussed and Kakuzu and Sasori both actually have lines for a change.

The plan was this: Sakura would have Kakuzu help her patch herself up, bribe him for silence for the night, head off to university early the following morning and, in so doing, avoid talking to any of her housemates until the following evening.

She figured that this would give her enough time to digest the events of the day and distance herself a little from... from everything.

It was a naive thought, because of course in _this_ house, nothing stayed quiet for long.

Still, when she hobbled in past Kakuzu’s outstretched arm, Sakura felt calm and oddly distant - mostly, she thought, just exhausted. Kakuzu’s room was warm enough that Sakura’s scraped skin itched just as much as it stung, and she stood awkwardly while he left to find the first aid kit.

For a while she stared at the space blankly. Books, journals. A pile of receipts. A laptop showing a spreadsheet. There wasn’t much that was decorative, except for an abacus with brightly-painted beads. His bed was rumpled, covers thrown back where he’d gotten up to answer her knock.

Sakura stared at nothing.

“Don’t drip on the rug,” Kakuzu said shortly.

The bleeding had stopped, but it would start again when they cleaned out her injuries. Sakura glanced at her feet. She took two steps to the side. She was off the rug.

She toed her shoes off, wobbling on her bad ankle. She didn’t remember hurting it, but it was definitely swelling now. Awkwardly, she pawed at the wall for balance.

Of course, that was when Hidan barged in. “Ne, Kakuzu, where’s my -”

Kakuzu looked up as though Hidan appearing in his bedroom at stupid o’clock at night while he was trying to sleep was a normal occurrence - and for all Sakura knew, it was. She wondered if the door had been locked before he’d let her in. She didn’t remember.

Hidan stopped mid-sentence, though. “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded loudly of her - which, well, there went her plan.

“It was a long night,” Sakura deflected flatly, mostly so she could avoid saying _I hurled myself out of a moving car. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done._

What a surreal statement. She felt a laugh bubbling up and ruthlessly suppressed it before more than a single huff had escaped. The attendant smile probably looked a bit crazy. It stretched a sore patch on her face.

Hidan was watching her with his pale eyes, hooded and glinting. She could almost feel them tracing the path of her injuries. She turned her head toward him. He didn’t meet her eyes; he was too busy examining the dried blood on her arm.

He smelled of damp hair and bittersweet shampoo when he moved toward her. It was a familiar smell for a reason that escaped her. Sakura watched him with hard eyes as he reached out and touched the flaking blood on her arm.

Of course, she thought belatedly, his religion was all about the glory of suffering. Tense and wary, she let him run his fingers across the dried streaks.

He dragged his nails through it, sending a rain of little flecks to the floor, and then brought his hand to his face and inhaled the smell. When he looked back at her, his pupils were huge and dark, and his breath was heavy.

There was probably a line between religious zeal and just being a kinky asshole, but for the life of her she wasn’t sure where it was.

“It’s almost morning,” Kakuzu broke in pragmatically. “Take your clothes off.”

Sakura blinked away from Hidan’s oddly compelling display. “What?”

Hidan snorted back an unflattering laugh, and picked his way through Kakuzu’s sparsely-furnished room to flop on his bed. “And me with no popcorn,” he purred, licking his fingers.

Aaaand that, there, was probably the difference between religion and kink. “No,” she said, flatly. “Absolutely not. Out.” She pointed.

Hidan raised his eyebrows. “You gonna make me?” he grinned.

“If she can’t, I will,” Kakuzu said. “It’s late. I want to sleep. _Get out_.”

Hidan eyed them. He licked his teeth.

Kakuzu heaved a sigh. A second later, he lunged. There was a few moments of fast, yelling movement, a meaty thunk, a sharp yelp - then the door slammed behind Hidan, who growled and cursed as he smacked into the opposite wall.

Kakuzu turned back to Sakura.

“Hurry up,” he ordered, wiping a trail of blood from the corner of his mouth with the heel of his palm.

“Right,” Sakura said. Of course she was going to have to take some of her clothes off. They were in the way of, and in some places attached to, her injuries. “Fine.”

Her shirt was more or less shredded, and her thick leggings had ragged holes and runs in them like they were stockings. There was blood on her bra, still drying where her breast had been scraped on the bitumen when she rolled. Oddly, it was the ruined bra that broke through her haze of pragmatic indifference.

That was upsetting. A good sports bra was both hard to find and pretty expensive. She wondered if she could still use it to jog in once she’d washed it.

Peeling herself out of her pants hurt because there were places where the fabric was stuck to her scrapes and cuts. More than one scrape started to bleed anew.

The catalogue of injuries, at the end of it, was impressive: two broken fingers, a busted ankle, a deep gash in her arm and one on her back, and scrapes in more places than she could conveniently count, including a particularly ugly one on her jaw. And aside from all of that, beneath Kakuzu’s rough, efficient hands, Sakura could feel the tenderness of nascent bruises.

She had no idea what she was meant to tell people in her classes. A car accident, maybe. Maybe she could just skip all her classes for a few weeks.

“The scrapes are an infection risk,” Kakuzu said while he was applying tiny butterfly stitches to the cut in her arm. “Keep an eye on them.”

Sakura nodded dumbly. She didn’t bother pointing out that she was the one with the first aid certificates. Everything was basically an infection risk. “I’ll keep them clean,” she said instead.

He nodded and didn’t make any further comments on the matter.

Sakura didn’t _like_ Kakuzu, not really. He was violent, impatient, bad-tempered; with razor edges like something that had been broken into pieces and put back together all wrong.

But she could definitely _appreciate_ Kakuzu. He was practical to a fault, quick, quiet and decidedly not prone to wild melodrama or hysterics, unlike... well, all her other housemates. Even quiet, watchful Sasori was occasionally provoked to strange dreams, fevered imagination and disturbing fancies.

“Thanks,” Sakura said wearily at the end of it all, watching him buddy-wrap her fingers with practised competence.

“Next time I’ll charge you for supplies,” said Kakuzu without looking up.

“Not this time?” Sakura raised her eyebrows - and then she wished she hadn’t, because he looked like he was considering it.

Kakuzu fell back into his desk chair, eyeing all of Sakura’s steri strips and clean white bandages. “Depends. What happened?”

“If I didn’t tell Hidan, what makes you think I’d tell you?” Sakura wondered, and then she realised that the obvious answer was that Kakuzu had the advantage of _not being Hidan_.

He must have seen this understanding on her face, because he relented. “If for no other reason than to save yourself the cost of my medical supplies,” he suggested.

That was kind of another point in his favour. TRIVIA paid her as well as she could have expected, but she wasn’t exactly rich. She’d ruined a heap of clothing since she moved in, and she sincerely doubted she’d be getting her phone back, and even if she did she probably wouldn’t trust it...

She sighed. She was going to have to tell them anyway; her insistence on privacy was just being petty and stupid.

She squared her shoulders. “I had to jump out of a car,” she said, firmly and confidently, even though inside her head it sounded a lot more like _I kind of leapt from a moving vehicle oh my god I’m an idiot help help._

Kakuzu’s face didn’t change very much. But slowly, ever so slowly, one of his eyebrows crept up, until his expression was one of towering disdain.

“You jumped out of a car,” he repeated. He looked her up and down. “Presumably it was moving.”

 _Towering disdain_ , like he’d never done something so stupid and dangerous.

“Oh my god, you’re such a hypocrite,” she muttered. “As if you don’t do stupid dangerous stuff every day!”

“I’ve never jumped out of a moving car,” Kakuzu informed her. She wasn’t sure if he actually was smug, or if she attributed smugness to his tone out of a sense of obligate humiliation.

“No, you confine yourself to picking fights with actual lunatics every day,” she snapped. “And -” _and something had to have led to those scars_ , she almost said, but she closed her mouth on the words.

Some things you didn’t say.

Kakuzu followed her gaze. When she met his eyes again his face was completely expressionless.

She shouldn’t have even thought about going there. Sakura’s confidence caved completely. “Ugh.” she covered her face with her hands. “I’m an idiot, okay, I know,” she muttered into her palms.

“Yes,” Kakuzu agreed.

There was a pause.

He stared at her like he had all the time in the world to wait her out.

She closed her eyes and heaved another sigh. “I was leaving practice, and somebody shoved a rag over my mouth, and then I woke up in the back of a car with a guy from Senjuu - I met him when Deidara-kun blew the art building up once, his name’s Sai. He was -”

“Sai,” Kakuzu cut in.

“Yeah, he’s -”

“I know who he is,” Kakuzu interrupted. “Come on,” he added, getting up and pulling on a shirt. He prodded her on her way with a shove to her shoulder, which, ow. “You’re going to need to tell everyone about this.”

“Hangon,” Sakura said, waving one arm, which, again, ow, “I need -”

Kakuzu seemed to have forgotten that she was standing around his bedroom in her underpants, which was - uh, a little unflattering, actually. He made an annoyed noise and threw her a sweater. It fit him, so when she gingerly crawled into it, it was basically a dress.

He watched her hesitant steps as they went down the stairs. “You need to elevate that,” he pointed out.

She nodded but said nothing.

Kakuzu smacked his fist on Sasori’s door as they went past, and then they ended up in the kitchen, where Sakura arranged herself so she could rest her ankle on the arm of another chair without flashing the whole room.

“I really wanted to be in bed by now,” she said to Kakuzu, who completely ignored her.

Sasori glided into the kitchen, followed by Deidara and Hidan, who were bickering about... something. Something about a hairbrush?

Sakura felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable, like some kind of display item in an exhibition. She didn’t like the expression that crossed Deidara’s face when he saw her. His eyes drifted from her, to Kakuzu, to her swelling ankle and bandaged legs.

It was probably not a bad thing that he couldn’t see most of her upper body. “Hi,” she said weakly, wiggling her unbroken fingers at him. This was the part she hadn’t wanted, this strange vulnerable awkwardness.

“You look awful, yeah,” he said.

That was probably a fair comment, so -

“What is this about?” Sasori said, returning to the table with a steaming mug of sludgy instant coffee in one hand.

“Black Ops kidnapped Sakura-san,” said Kakuzu without preamble.

There was a sudden burst of noise from Hidan and Deidara, mostly swearing. Sasori blinked once, slowly, and then sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

“Wait - _black ops_?” Sakura interrupted loudly, and with no small alarm. “There’s no way Sai is -”

Kakuzu shook his head. “No, that’s the name of their gang.”

Gang. Well, she supposed she’d more or less expected that.

Sasori stood up. “I’ll call Leader.”

“Pein’s sick,” Sakura remembered. It seemed like ages ago, but it was actually only a couple of days. She doubted he was recovered yet.

Sasori paused. “Konan-san, then.”

 

* * *

 

If Konan was displeased to be roused after midnight, she didn’t show it. When she arrived at the share house she was poised and elegant, not a hair out of place.

The meeting was long, for all that it was just her housemates and Konan. People kept interrupting Sakura’s weary narrative with questions.

“Sai?” Deidara interrupted at one point. “From the art department?”

“Aa,” Sakura agreed.

“I hope you punched him in the face again, yeah,” he muttered.

“You punched someone in the face?” Hidan said, cracking a grin.

“Someone other than you, you mean,” Kakuzu pointed out.

“He said I was ugly!” Sakura protested. “I saw him for like two minutes, and he just - ugh, who does that? Nobody does that.”

“Not to you, apparently,” murmured Konan, sipping from her cup of tea.

Sakura frowned at her, feeling a little ganged up upon. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said firmly.

“Hmm,” said Konan.

“More relevantly,” Sasori cut in, “you punched a black ops member in the face.” His eyes drifted for a moment, and then he settled them back on Sakura. “No wonder they targeted you, and not one of the other members...”

“He said it was because I moved in here, actually,” said Sakura. “He wanted me to be a spy.”

Konan blinked. She shared a glance with Kakuzu. “A spy?”

“Well... I guess? I think he was less dramatic. Something about ‘observing’ and ‘reporting,’ basically. He said something about... somebody else saying something about paying me,” she scrunched up her nose. Now that it was over, the details were actually kind of hazy.

There were a lot of ‘I thinks’ and ‘I guesses’ and ‘somethings’ in there. It was probably a very good thing she wasn’t expected to spy and report, really, because she clearly wasn’t very good at it.

“I remember he wouldn’t tell me the name of the person he was talking about,” she said after a second.

Konan nodded. “That would be because nobody knows the name,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure half of the black ops even know the name.”

“If this gang has some fancy name,” she said slowly, “do you guys have one too?”

“Eh?” Deidara blinked his bright blue eyes at her. “Ne, Sakura-san, didn’t anybody tell you? We’re Akatsuki.”

“...Dawn?” Sakura frowned. “Red moon? Red month?”

“Owner-san called it Akatsuki to mean ‘Dawn’,” Konan nodded. Her face took on a slightly pained expression. “He said it was a revolution in the spreading of vital pornography to those who need it most."

“Of course he did," said Sakura.

“Everybody else writes it with the characters for ‘filth’ and ‘luck’, yeah,” said Deidara cheerfully. His smile was a little bit wicked.

“Even you?” Sakura looked to Konan in surprise.

She nodded solemnly. “Even me,” she agreed, lips curling around the edges.

“Are you going to finish or not?” Sasori broke in impatiently.

Sakura shrugged. “I said no,” she said. “And then he,” she lifted her hand with its thickly-bandaged fingers and gestured with it.

“And the rest?” Konan prompted, eyes drifting toward her swollen ankle.

“I jumped out of his car,” she admitted.

There was a long pause.

“You jumped out of his car?” Konan repeated. “While it was moving?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she muttered.

There was a pause.

“But you’re alright now, yeah?” Deidara asked carefully, looking at her as though he could see through Kakuzu’s overlarge sweater to the injuries beneath. His expression was serious, which in Sakura’s experience was saved for the direst occasions only.

“Better than she should be,” said Kakuzu, giving her an annoyed look.

“You’ll have to take time off from work,” Konan said practically, following the path of Deidara’s gaze. “There’s not much call for cafe staff who can’t walk properly or use their hands,” she pointed out.

“Oh...” said Sakura slowly.

Konan waved one hand. “You’ll get paid,” she said breezily, as though the money Sakura earned at the cafe was of little consequence. For the first time, Sakura wondered how much crime paid. “If it comes to it, we’ll take it from the slush fund.”

Sakura did not know what a ‘slush fund’ was, but it didn’t sound very respectable. She nodded instead.

Sakura stayed at the table, too tired to be bothered moving far, and watched in exhausted silence as Konan packed up, left her teacup for somebody else to wash, and headed for the door. “I’ll let the others know,” she said perfunctorily, instead of wishing them a good night.

Kakuzu disappeared almost immediately after, muttering about class in the morning, and trailing Hidan, who was loudly commenting on the state of Kakuzu’s immortal soul.

“You jumped out of a speeding _car_ ,” said Deidara, suddenly grinning. “You," he leaned over to offer her a fistbump, “are the most awesome.”

Gingerly, Sakura knocked her uninjured fist against his. “...thank you?”

“I think you mispronounced _stupid_ ,” Sasori snorted.

Deidara stuck his tongue out.

 

* * *

Hidan stopped her outside her bedroom door, after a very laborious, slightly whimpery climb up the stairs.

“What,” she said. It wasn’t even really a question. “I swear, Hidan-san,” she growled, “if you stand between me and my bed right now --”

“Shut up for a second, will you?” he snapped.

She ground her teeth, and reminded herself that she had two broken fingers and it would hurt her more than him if she punched him in the face.

“Did you,” he gestured oddly at her, and then trailed off uncertainly.

Another time, Sakura would have waited him out, because an uncertain Hidan was terribly novel. “Did I what?” she prompted impatiently.

“Did you take anything for those?”

“Take...?” she paused. “Oh, painkillers." Huh. Of all the stupid questions he could have asked, that was not one she’d expected. “Not yet,” she admitted.

Oddly, Kakuzu hadn’t even suggested it.

Probably, she thought, he was used to patching up Hidan.

He stared at her for a few long, moderately weird seconds. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Hidan go so long in a state where consciousness and silence overlapped.

“Don’t,” he said. His voice came out harsh and not entirely happy.

Sakura raised her eyebrows.

He turned on his heel and headed back down the corridor to his own room before she could comment.

To be absolutely honest, painkillers were all the way down stairs and she couldn’t be bothered going to get them anyway. She locked the door, crawled into bed and passed out cold for many hours.

 

* * *

 

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 10:34 PM  
Message body: Are we on for tomorrow?>

<From: Tenten  
Timestamp: 4:50 AM  
Message body: I’m coming over anyway.>

 

* * *

 

 

Sakura woke up only a few hours since she’d gone to sleep to the sound of Tenten breaking into her bedroom from the balcony.

“You should just get me a key,” Tenten told her cheerfully and loudly. She threw open the curtains that had drifted shut behind her as though they’d let the morning sunlight in - although it was, in fact, still dark. Then, “Why aren’t you up?”

Sakura cracked her eyes open.

For a second she had no memory of the night’s events, and she just wanted to go back to sleep - but then the dull throb of her body announced itself and she remembered. “Ow,” she said.

Tenten picked her way over to the bed and peeled back a cover.

“...Kakashi-san’s training is a lot scarier than I’d heard,” she said, looking concerned.

“Don’t make me laugh,” muttered Sakura, “my ribs hurt.” She inched her way up the bed until she was sitting up. Every part of her felt stiff and sore, delayed onset muscle soreness blending unpleasantly with a cruel mixture of bruising, scrapes and cuts.

“What happened?”

“Don’t jaywalk,” Sakura lied drily. “You might get clipped by a car.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Tenten said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Her dark eyes were wide and horrified. “Are you serious? You got _hit by a car_? Oh my god.”

“It wasn’t as bad as that sounds,” Sakura told her. “It was more of a... nudge, really. I got _nudged_ by a car. A vehicular love-tap.”

“What the _hell_ , you idiot,” Tenten said. “You could have _died_!”

“Yeah, well, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.” Or, well, she hoped.

Tenten rubbed her face with her hands. “Okay, so, I guess, no running today,” she said after a taking a second to calm herself.

Sakura grunted an affirmative and then, remembering, drew her blanket away to inspect her ankle. She’d slept with it on a pillow, but she was aware that she’d completely ignored a number of the usual treatments for soft-tissue injuries. It was still swollen, except now it had come up hideously bruised, too.

“Ow,” said Tenten, leaning closer to examine it. “That looks bad. Can you walk on it?”

“Walk on it, bend it,” Sakura nodded, gingerly rotating the joint. “It doesn’t hurt that much as long as I’m not using it. It’s probably not broken,” she added.

Tenten frowned. “Probably not, but you should get it checked anyway. Neji had a broken ankle he insisted was a sprain, like an idiot, and he ended up not being able to walk properly for months.”

The prospect of months off her feet was not a promising one to Sakura. “Yeah," she sighed. “Okay."

Tenten hesitated. “I can come back and take you after training, if you want,” she said. “I mean, I don’t have a car, but... if you need help, you know, getting there?”

Sakura contemplated that for a second. “Yeah, I guess so,” she agreed eventually. “Don’t text me, my phone’s a write off. I’ll have to get a new one.”

“Your life is an ongoing tragedy.” Tenten wrinkled her nose. “What’s your email address?”

Sakura spent the rest of the morning - once it got light - out on her balcony with her bad ankle iced and compressed and raised like a responsible person, drinking tea from an enormous mug and reading Icha Icha Paradise.

She was still wearing Kakuzu’s enormous sweater, which she had no intention of giving back until he made her.

Tenten dropped by again after what would have been lunch time, if Sakura had been bothered getting up and walking down all those stairs to get something to eat. Together they went on an adventure to the clinic, where the doctor poked and prodded and gently manipulated her ankle and finally declared that it was a torn ligament, not a break.

“That doesn’t mean you can go running about like an idiot,” she warned Sakura, eyeing her suspiciously. “And I would strongly recommend against leaping out into traffic again.”

“Me, too,” muttered Sakura, to Tenten’s evident amusement.

 

* * *

 

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 10:17 PM  
Message body: Flute-girl wrote my phone number on the wall of the men’s toilet. >

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 10:21 PM  
Message body: isn'tthisyournumber . jpg?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 10:21 PM  
Message body: idk if you can read that from the picture. It says ‘hot milf wants super hung boy toy call 4 good time’.

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 11:01 PM  
Message body: Forehead, are you ignoring me?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 10:02 AM  
Message body: Sakura?>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 8:03 PM  
Message body: Missed call. CALL 222 FOR MESSAGEBANK>

 

* * *

 

  
<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 9:00 PM  
Message body: Ino says you're ignoring her, are you okay? HEY. IF YOU'RE NOT SAKURA AND YOU FIND THIS PHONE, GIVE IT BACK TO HER, KTHX.>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 11:01 AM  
Message body: Missed call. CALL 222 FOR MESSAGEBANK>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 1:15 PM  
Message body: Missed call. CALL 222 FOR MESSAGEBANK>

<From: The Great Uzumaki Naruto, King of Ramen  
Timestamp: 5:43 PM  
Message body: Missed call. CALL 222 FOR MESSAGEBANK>

 

* * *

 

<From: U. Sasuke  
Timestamp: 10:03 AM  
Message body: Sakura, for his own safety, call the moron. No court in the world will convict me.>

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, as far as I know, which is not very far, when they say 'akatsuki' in canon they mean _暁_ , which is "dawn"? But you can also write "aka" as 垢 (i.e., filth, dirt, grime) and "tsuki" as 点き (i.e., luck). This is not at all the version of "luck" I'm used to - as far as I know, luck is mostly written 運, but... Japanese is weird, and the way organisations, buildings, people, streets, etc., can be named is _even weirder_ to me as a native speaker of English, where you can just... leave out vital points of grammar and randomly pronounce things with any variation of their pronunciation you feel like. 
> 
> So if I'm horribly wrong, uh... let me know - because I do want to know! - but know also that I'm unlikely to go and fix it, because that exchange about the porn makes me stupidly happy, so just pretend it makes sense.
> 
> Additionally, I ended up cutting almost 2000 words from this chapter because they didn't fit how I wanted them to, and they no longer happen. Scrapped bits and excerpts that didn't end up in the fic are over at tozettewrites.tumblr.com, which you can find, follow, not follow or use to ask me prying questions as you like. :)
> 
> Cheers! : )


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura pays Kakuzu for her sanity, Kakashi misses his student and Zetsu has a pair of secateurs. Mostly this chapter is Hidan and yelling. ~~it's like the two are related or something~~

<From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 10:43 AM  
Message body: We have an overlapping break between classes tomorrow. If you aren't busy, I'll be in the law library.>

If Sakura had seen this message, she would probably have melted at the idea that Itachi was reaching out to her. For a platonic library date! In friendship!

Unfortunately her phone was steadily running out of battery, buried under a pile of garbage bags in a back-alley dumpster.

Pity.

 

* * *

 

Sakura had a medical certificate that kept her away from Senjuu for a few days. All she had to do was fire off an email to Tsunade-sama. She’d hesitated over what to tell her teachers for a while and finally settled on writing, “I was in an accident.”

Suitably vague.

Excellent.

Because she’d been injured ‘in the course of business’ according to Konan, Sakura was still getting paid for shifts she didn’t even show up to - she wasn’t sure how that worked from a business owner’s standpoint, but she suspected that crime did in fact pay a lot more than she’d initially assumed. Certainly the expenditure didn’t seem to concern Konan.

Of course, nothing else really seemed to concern Konan, either.

Sakura’s housemates didn’t really seem thrown by the idea that she’d been attacked and kidnapped by a rival gang. Oh, they were annoyed, and a few of them - well, Deidara, really, since he was the one with social skills - seemed concerned by how she might respond to such an event, but they basically took it in stride.

Sakura surprised herself by how _she_ took it in stride.

True, she was hiding in her bedroom and ignoring the outside world completely, but walking “was not advised,” according to her doctor, and if she wasn’t going to school... Well, it was a tough job, but _somebody_ had to curl up in her bed all day and read Icha Icha Paradise.

She was up to the part where the mysterious gentleman jewellery thief, framed for a series of grisly murders, was caught and held under arrest by an improbably beautiful police officer, who was interrogating him. With fellatio. Because, sure, why not.

And, look, okay: willing suspension of disbelief only took Sakura so far, but Icha Icha Paradise was so self-aware, so playful and fun, that it didn’t seem to matter so much that the story line was ridiculous.

It didn’t even prevent her from becoming stupidly invested in the characters.

Sakura was pretty sure that it was the smiling accountant who was the murderer, but she was really caught up in the jewellery thief’s story line.

Of course, she was just up to the bit where his long-term girlfriend burst into the interrogation room determined to prove that she could perform fellatio better than the police officer when Hidan burst into her bedroom without knocking, dressed in jeans and a shirt that had all the buttons ripped off it.

He ignored her surprised noises and made himself comfortable at the foot of her bed. Maybe too comfortable.

“Hidan-san,” she said, eyeing him suspiciously. Innocent he was not. He didn‘t look injured, except for a few places that were still recovering - his bandaged hand, for instance. “Do you need something?”

“No, but you do,” he said. “Is that Jiraiya’s shitty novel?” he reached out and tugged on it.

Sakura yanked it out of his reach and clutched it to her chest. “Hidan-san...” her voice was a warning.

“Oh?” Hidan’s eyebrows rose. “It’s not good for you to become too attached to worldly possessions,” he rebuked, eyes glinting.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” she growled. “I haven’t even finished the story. Also, must you _destroy everything you touch_?”

He tilted his head. Then he opened his mouth and took a breath.

“Don’t answer that,” she muttered, shoving Icha Icha under her pillow, where it would be - hopefully - safe. “I don’t want to hear the answer. What do you want?”

“Hey, hey, is that any way to treat somebody who came here to help you?” he said, smacking her foot - the foot attached to her sprained ankle.

Sakura yelped and used her other foot to kick him in the ribs.

“What the hell?” he said, rubbing his side, even though she was pretty sure he could have shaken it off like nothing.

“My ankle is _sprained_ , you idiot,” she snapped at him. “Don’t go smacking it!”

Very deliberately, he poked her ankle with one long pale finger. Somehow he managed to find the perfect place and angle to cause a dull throb. She ground her teeth.

“First commandment,” he said, looking surprisingly calm, steadily increasing the pressure of his finger. “Pain’s how you know you’re alive.”

“First --?” he increased the pressure again. “For - Ow! Get your goddamned hand off me,” she yelled, snatching up the nearest object and hurling it at him. It was an anatomy textbook, and it went wide when Hidan dodged.

He didn’t dodge the clinical practice one.

He grinned at her, though, as though there was some great show of affection in his brand new split lip, and swung both his legs onto her bed. “See? Don’t you feel better now? You should just listen to me, you know, I know what I’m talking about.”

Sakura was willing to allow that his stupid religion was one of the few topics about which Hidan was very, very knowledgeable. But even if he hadn’t been, she was pretty sure he’d still be talking. Hidan loved the sound of his own voice almost as much as Naruto did.

“So,” he said, “pain’s how you know you’re alive. If you’re at peace, you’re dead - maybe not literally, but dead in the, you know, the spiritual sense.”

There was a long pause. Hidan just looked at her.

“Right,” said Sakura slowly, wondering why the hell he was telling her this.

“So be fucking grateful for it,” he added severely.

Grateful? Yeah, no. “I don’t really see the point in being grateful for something that hurts,” she pointed out. “Why would anybody be grateful for that?”

He squeezed her injured ankle, not very gently. She tensed. He smiled. “I’m so fucking glad you asked, Sakura,” he said, dropping the honorific in a way that was too familiar. She ignored it. “Let me explain.”

Sakura suspected there was no ‘letting’ involved. She was a captive audience for him. He knew it. She knew it. She did not have a choice in the matter.

Until that moment, Sakura had lived in blissful ignorance of the fact that Jashinism had a formal religious text. She’d never even considered it before, probably because the religion was a tiny, terrifying footnote in history. She’d looked it up after the goat incident, and discovered that these days it was practised by fewer than point oh-one per cent of the population and literally outlawed in a number of civilised countries.

Also, although Hidan called it a text, that was was kind of a misleading word. There wasn’t a book, or anything written down that he had access to. It was an oral tradition, probably because sane people who found such books burned them before anybody could read them.

Hidan had it memorised.

Because _of course_ he did.

He recited it to her for three hours before Kakuzu got home, keys rattling in the door downstairs.

“KAKUZU,” bellowed Sakura at the top of her lungs, interrupting a rhythmic and liquid sermon on how sacrificial agony radiates and brings ecstasy upon the supplicant because _yes, thank you, she’d seen that for herself, please god stop talking Hidan._

Kakuzu seemed wholly inclined to ignore her, probably because he could hear Hidan from wherever he was in the house.

She could even guess at his motives: when Hidan was bothering Sakura, he wasn’t talking to _Kakuzu_.

“Hey! Shut up,” Hidan interrupted her, lunging forward and slapping a hand over her mouth. “For fuck’s sakes, I’m trying to help you here, you dumb ingrate. Stop fucking yelling.”

She ripped his hand away. “KAKUZU!” she shrieked, and she was almost - _almost_ \- ashamed by how completely desperate she sounded.

Hidan snarled.

“No, no, I just remembered,” she said frantically, flailing an arm at him. “I owe Kakuzu money!”

Kakuzu’s silhouette darkened her door in about three seconds flat.

“Well, don’t just fucking _admit_ it,” Hidan said, looking at her like she’d sprouted a second head.

She shot Kakuzu a pleading, despairing look over Hidan’s shoulder.

“You say that like I’d forget,” Kakuzu said to Hidan. “Anyway, this is a private negotiation,” he added pointedly. “Out.”

“Bullshit!" Hidan glowered at him. “Are you seriously going to pick on an injured girl just for _money_?” he spat the word ‘money’ like it was some kind of hideous curse.

“Yes,” Kakuzu said. “She won’t find it any worse than your boring proselytising,” he added.

“Shut up, it’s completely different. I’m trying to _save her soul_.” Hidan scowled and turned back to Sakura. “Ne, Sakura, you don’t owe this dipshit anything, he’s -”

Sakura tuned him out, because Kakuzu had raised his hand and flashed her four fingers, mouthing ‘forty’.

He had her in a tight spot, so of course Kakuzu wouldn’t come cheap. Sakura sighed and nodded.

“Out,” said Kakuzu, setting one hand on Hidan’s shoulder.

“‘Out’," Hidan mocked. “I’m not your fucking dog, Kakuzu, and I’m kind of busy here.”

“Ah," said Sakura, “Kakuzu-san and I really do need to discuss the... money I owe him," she said hesitantly.

“Ehh? Why? It’s just money,” Hidan scrunched up his nose.

Kakuzu was looking more and more murderous by the second.

Sakura inched further up her bed and away from the impending violence. Just money indeed.

“Kakuzu, you can’t do shit like that, that’s seriously fucking low,” Hidan went on without pause.

And on.

And _on_.

Until Kakuzu lost his temper, hauled back one big fist and punched him in the face.

“What the - !” Hidan went down in a flailing pile of limbs. “ _Kakuzuuu_ ," he growled, glowering up at him from the floor.

“Hidan,” Kakuzu responded blandly, stretching out his fingers and popping his knuckles.

Hidan grinned. He came up whooping with laughter, teeth and eyes flashing, feet skidding on the wooden floors. He launched himself at Kakuzu with a speed that was honestly astonishing.

They smacked up against one of her bedroom walls so hard they shook the light fixture, and then Kakuzu rather aggressively muscled Hidan in the general direction of the door.

Hidan smashed a heel into Kakuzu’s instep, elbowed him in the solar plexus and, cackling madly, tackled him while he was off balance and winded.

Sakura winced at the sound Kakuzu’s arm made when it clipped her wooden door frame. That was definitely going to bruise.

But, hey, at least they were out of her room.

She got cautiously to her feet, hobbled to the door, and closed it quietly on the noises of loud melee.

Then she locked it.

When Kakuzu knocked on her door three hours later, she did not open her door. She slipped his payment out underneath in cash.

“He’s gone, you know,” Kakuzu said. His voice was scratchy, and she remembered that at some point Hidan had been roaring about choking him.

She could hear the soft swish of notes being counted.

She did not unlock her door.

Kakuzu’s foot steps receded.

Sakura buried herself beneath her covers again. She tried to sleep, but bits and pieces of Hidan’s recitation kept catching on the sharp corners of her mind. The religious stuff was... not necessarily her thing, she supposed, but there was a rhythm to the text of the Jashinists, a strange liquid beauty - provided nobody listened to what the words were saying.

Still, when she closed her eyes, the memory of Hidan’s sing-song voice reciting “spine, femoral, lungs, larynx, throat, heart, liver...” with a dreamy happiness...

It stayed with her.

She touched her hands to her torso, contemplating the vulnerable, squishy meat that made up her body.

...

Jashinism was so weird.

In defiance, she took some painkillers before rolling over, determined to sleep.

Take _that_ , Hidan.

 

* * *

 

But, perhaps inevitably, it was only two days after she’d been injured that Sakura woke to a startled yelp and a sudden crash of glass.

And then, in the moonlit dark, a man rolled across her bedroom floor. He moved like a pro and sprang to his feet, somehow coming up with a big shard of glass clutched in one hand, ready to be used in defence.

She recognised that weird grey hair in the moonlight.

It was Kakashi.

What the hell?

Sakura squinted in the dimness - and also in deep, deep confusion.

She just...

...didn’t understand anything anymore.

Zetsu stepped in after him, silent and surprisingly graceful. He picked his way through the glass underfoot.

“What the _hell_?” Sakura croaked, still half asleep.

Both men ignored her. Zetsu stared at Kakashi with wild yellow eyes. “Sakura-san needs her rest,” he said, inching closer to Kakashi. “You need to leave now,” he recommended, and then his voice went hard and - “ _Or I’ll cut your face off,_ ” he added.

Zetsu stepped toward Kakashi with a pair of gardening secateurs in hand. He snipped them menacingly in Kakashi’s direction.

“Maa, maa,” said Kakashi, holding his hands up defensively, but he’d only just opened his mouth to complete whatever response he was going to make when Zetsu lunged for him.

Kakashi dodged.

They were both very damn quick on their feet.

There was a lot of glass underfoot, though. She could hear it making a mess of the floor.

“ _What the hell_?” Sakura growled. She was much more awake now, and her temper was moving off at a simmer.

In the dark, there was a moment of hesitation as both men faltered, unsure if the other was stopping.

Then somebody - she thought it was Kakashi - lashed out with a punch.

More scuffling ensued. Somebody cursed.

Sakura took a deep breath. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?"

When her voice faded, the silence was ringing.

Down the corridor, a door slammed. “IT’S TOO EARLY FOR THIS SHIT, YEAH,” Deidara wailed.

“SHUT THE HELL UP, PRINCESS, I’M TRYING TO SLEEP,” Hidan roared back.

There was an awkward pause as both of them realised neither had been responsible for Sakura’s loud outburst.

The silhouette Sakura thought was Kakashi froze.

A second later, Deidara slammed her door open and smacked the light switch. The sudden flood of light sizzled against her retinas. Sakura flinched, then squinted.

Kakashi and Zetsu blinked in the brightness.

Kakashi, Sakura noticed, had potting mix in his hair. Something, somewhere, was bleeding. Zetsu must have caught him by surprise out in the dark.

Sakura felt like an idiot sitting huddled beneath her blankets in bed, but she really didn’t want to get up. Her ankle hurt and she was tired and bruised and she’d stayed up - probably too late - reading Icha Icha Paradise, which had fallen off the edge of her bed at some point and was now decorated by a few splinters of glass.

Deidara - all red-eyed, messy-haired, bristling five feet and four inches of him - glowered at the men.

Hidan gave him a none-too-gentle shove from behind, propelling him into the room and out of the narrow entryway so they could both get inside her room.

Hidan was carrying a cleaver the length of his forearm, and he looked very steady when he pointed it in Kakashi’s direction.

“Maa,” said Kakashi, much too casually, “I don’t think that’s balanced for throwing, Stranger-san.” He adopted a lazy slouch, jamming his hands into his pockets. It must have been one of his hands or wrists that was bleeding, because a stain started to bloom over his pocket immediately.

“Yeah?” Hidan hefted the cleaver, sighting down his arm at Kakashi. He looked very, very confident. “You sure you want to risk it, godless-son-of-a-bitch-san?”

“No,” said Sakura, rubbing her tired eyes. She forgot about her bandaged hand and winced when she jarred her fingers. Carefully, she dropped that hand. “Don’t throw anything pointy at him,” she said heaving a sigh. “I think this is for me to deal with.”

“Yeah?” Hidan’s eyebrows rose. Then he smiled. “I knew you’d catch on eventually," Hidan said cheerfully to her. He retracted his knife arm, tossed the cleaver spinning into the air and then caught it casually a few times. “I’ll hold him down for you, sweetheart, you can stab -”

Deidara punched him in the arm, cutting him off before Sakura could freak out. “Don’t be so inconsiderate,” he said, “Sakura-san doesn’t want you having your creepy religious rituals all over her bedroom floor, yeah,” he declared, crossing his arms.

“Shut up, Sakura-chan’s great at getting blood stains outta shit,” Hidan elbowed him in the ribs, hard, but neither man took his eyes off Kakashi. “She understands this opportunity for what it is - it’s not every day an intruder just breaks into your house. This is fucking _self defence_.”

“Wait, you let Tobi _and_ Hidan call you Sakura-chan?” Deidara squawked, because, obviously, that was the most important thing here.

Sakura just covered her face and groaned. “Oh my god,” she muttered.

“ _Which_ god?” Hidan demanded.

She ignored him. “How is this my life?” she asked her hand.

“I suppose that depends on your belief system,” Zetsu mused contemplatively, “but I’m inclined to think that there must be some element of karma for it to be so naturally unfortunate.”

“Shut up,” said a hard voice from the doorway. “I can hear you from the ground floor.”

“Sasori-san,” said Sakura, turning. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep. But I do need to concentrate, and I’m sick of waiting for you to stop bickering like three year olds. It’s aggravating,” his heavy-lidded eyes drifted to Hidan, and then returned to Kakashi and went flat. “Who are you?”

“Ahh,” said Kakashi, edging ever closer to the balcony door. “Just a friend dropping in,” he said cheerfully - and evasively.

“A friend,” drawled Deidara dubiously, crossing his arms across his chest. He had nice arms, smooth-skinned and gently defined, and Sakura kind of hated that she took the opportunity to notice this _now_ of all times.

Hidan fingered his cleaver and watched Kakashi speculatively.

“Actually,” Sakura interjected, “he’s my ethics teacher.”

There was a confused silence.

Zetsu laughed like a hacksaw going through wood.

“Ne, sempai, doesn’t Senjuu have rules about that?” Deidara wondered, turning toward Sasori uncertainly.

“About teachers breaking into their students’ homes in the dark and starting a fight?” Sasori said from the doorway.

“She wasn’t answering her phone,” Kakashi said defensively. He was starting to look a little pale. Sakura wondered how heavily he was bleeding, and how much she actually cared.

“‘She’s’ sitting right there, yeah,” Deidara pointed out.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he said to her. Beneath his suspicious pallor, beneath his mask, there was...

“Oh my _god_. Are you sulking?” Sakura asked incredulously. “Are you _sulking_ because Zetsu-san stopped you from sneaking in here?” She paused. “Of course you are, of course you planned it so I’d wake up with your stupid face staring at me.”

She knew from his single blink that he hadn’t expected so accurate an analysis.

Well, he could just suck it up. If he’d underestimated Sakura’s intelligence that was his own problem. And his own mistake.

Kakashi gave the wall next to her head a very nonchalant look. For all his affected unconcern, though, she noticed that his visible eye was always tracking his surroundings. It was hard to be relaxed, Sakura supposed, when you were standing between Hidan‘s cleaver and Zetsu‘s, um... Zetsu.

Kakashi-sensei probably hadn’t even considered that Deidara was well and truly in range to set him on fire.

“You weren’t in class.”

Had this been planned as some kind of perverse punishment for not coming to class? To _Kakashi’s_ class? Sakura stared at him. “You are the biggest hypocrite in the world,” she informed him. Then, “Get out of my bedroom.”

He touched a dramatic hand to his chest. “Student-san, you’re -”

“This is taking too long,” said Sasori, stalking forward.

Kakashi’s balance shifted, preparatory.

“Sasori-san,” said Zetsu quietly but firmly, “please do not trouble yourself. This intruder will not be a problem for much longer.”

Kakashi shot him a startled look - one that told Sakura that he clearly did not understand what was going on.

Then he wobbled. “What--?”

“It won’t last more than a few hours, sensei,” promised Zetsu. His tone was still not entirely without malice.

“Ah." Sasori relaxed.

“What did you do?" Kakashi looked kind of green around the edges.

“I haven’t got any idea what you’re talking about,” said Zetsu serenely.

“The hell you d--aahhh," said Kakashi, staggering sideways.

Zetsu blinked at him, unmoved.

Sasori tapped his foot impatiently.

Deidara grinned.

Then Kakashi dropped like a sack of rice, and nobody bothered to catch him. Sakura winced as he hit the floor.

“That was mean, guys,” she said, peering over the edge of her bed at him.

“There was a strange masked man climbing onto your balcony in the middle of the night,” Zetsu pointed out. “We don’t know who every member of black ops actually is.”

“Oh,” said Sakura.

In that case, it made perfect sense for Zetsu to kick him through her door, drug him and come after him with gardening shears.

At some point, she was going to have to come to terms with the fact that this was now actually her life.

“So, um,” she said, looking over at Zetsu. “False alarm? Sorry,” she added.

“I have noticed that your friends frequently climb in through your balcony,” Zetsu said slowly. “Perhaps you could encourage them to use the door?”

“I’ll ask,” said Sakura, although she really did not have high hopes.

There was an awkward pause.

Sasori glanced around the room and sniffed once. “We’re done here,” he announced shortly, and then he glided soundlessly over the debris and back down the hallway.

Zetsu eyed Kakashi uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure he should leave Kakashi there. He crouched low and touched his visible eyelid gently with two fingers. “Now would be a perfect time to cut off his face,” he contemplated, dragging his fingers over the mask and down to his chin.

Sakura winced. “No,” she vetoed. “Have you forgotten the part where half of you are already suspected of murder?”

Zetsu stared at Kakashi for a moment longer. Then he tapped his nose and returned to his full height. “I had forgotten,” he agreed easily. “Sleep well, Sakura-san,” he added, and disappeared through what remained of her balcony door.

“That was exciting,” Deidara snorted softly, uncrossed his arms, and picked his way across the floorboards to Sakura’s bed. “So,” he said, climbing up on it. “He’s not, like, your boyfriend?”

“ _Kakashi-sensei_?” she repeated incredulously.

Deidara shrugged. “No accounting for taste, yeah,” he pointed out

“No,” said Sakura, looking over at Kakashi, slumped on the floor. Sure, he was good looking - assuming his face conformed to the standard set by his body - but he was one of the most irritating, frustrating human beings she’d ever met.

And, for perspective’s sake: she’d met Hidan.

“He’s not her fucking boyfriend,” growled Hidan.

“How would you know?” Deidara sniped back, rolling his eyes. He poked the blankets, figured out where Sakura’s feet were, and arranged his own sprawling limbs around them.

“Fuck this,” said Hidan, who seemed to have realised that there was minimal opportunity for bloodshed now that Kakashi wasn’t conscious. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Thank god,” muttered Deidara when he slammed the door after him.

Sakura looked back over at Kakashi and sighed. “Give me a hand?” she asked, carefully getting out of bed. She picked her way over to Kakashi and Deidara groaned and got up as well. Together, they managed to get him propped up on her bed.

His hand was bleeding, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d initially though. It was almost certainly a graze from Zetsu’s shears. She cleaned it and slapped a bandage over the injury.

Then they stepped back and examined Kakashi’s person. Sakura leaned against the wall to take the weight off her injured ankle.

On the bed, Kakashi breathed, deep and even.

“You know,” Sakura said conversationally, “when I decided I wanted to study to be a doctor, this wasn’t really what I anticipated.”

Deidara shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think anybody thought you’d get kidnapped, yeah,” he said. “But now they’re all paranoid you’ll get hurt.”

Sakura scrunched up her nose. She wanted to say she could take care of herself - she felt almost obligated, since she was the only girl in the house - but her sprained ankle and broken fingers attested otherwise, to say nothing of the maddening itch of her healing scabs.

“I guess I just need to learn to take care of myself better,” Sakura said, staring balefully at Kakashi.

Which meant more time with Kakashi-sensei, unfortunately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about the many other things I could write for this chapter but I'm sick and I just wanted to write Hidan being a dork. 
> 
> If you're interested, my [tumblr is over here](http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com/). I also asked, as a matter of curiosity, which of the many, many silly fun Naruto fics I've started I should be continuing with and posting, and that's over on tumblr too... that post is [over here](http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com/post/92222878431/) if you wanted to look at it.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author succumbs to pressure from her readers and Sasori is in most of the chapter.

Sakura swept up the broken glass and left Kakashi alone in her bed for all of ten minutes while she cautiously and painfully descended to the kitchen and made herself a calming cup of tea.

When she returned, Kakashi was gone and the frame of her broken balcony door was swinging open. Her curtains blew in the wind.

He’d left her a note.

“Training, two weeks, my place, 3 pm. Don’t be late.”

Sakura eyed his henohenomoheji suspiciously.

Kakashi was very, very frustrating.

At least, she thought, brushing the note to the floor and crawling back onto her bed with her tea, he’d woken up. Not that she didn’t believe Zetsu, but... well...

He’d woken up.

That was the main thing.

Even if she wanted to strangle him for _breaking into her bedroom_. Who did stuff like that?

Sakura took a deep, deep calming breath and drank her chamomile. She couldn’t move around too much for another few days, so she may as well try to get back to sleep.

She curled up beneath the covers and did not contemplate how Hidan had seriously suggested she _stab her ethics teacher._

Well, okay, maybe she thought about it a little.

Only because it was so messed up, though.

Although it was kind of nice of him to offer to hold him down like that...

"Ugh." She stared at her ceiling, ignoring the dull throb of her abused foot and her steadily-purpling bruises. “This is actually your life,” she muttered.

It didn’t have to be. She could pack up and leave, she supposed. She thought about the problems with the lease and transferring her bond to some other poor bastard, and about her other options, how she might have to transfer from Senjuu --

But, well, all of those were small problems. She could solve them if she had to.

She was forced to conclude that she didn’t actually _want_ to leave.

As weird and volatile and occasionally unfriendly as they were, she... kind of liked the people she was with now. Her life was hectic and busy and - apparently - very painful, but...

She liked them. She wanted to keep them.

Sakura gnawed a nail in the dark.

No. She’d just have to be better prepared next time she was in a dangerous situation. And she would be - provided she had enough time before somebody tried to hurt her again.

With that thought settled, everything in her mind fell into place. Her only remaining anxiety was _when_ somebody might try to hurt her again. There was no _if_. She was affiliated with the gang - this, this _Akatsuki_ \- now.

Somewhere a clock was ticking.

With that ominous thought in mind, Sakura knew that the next few weeks of convalescence were going to feel like eternity.

She never did get back to sleep, and eventually she fetched her textbooks and began to go over her readings. However, it was apparently a day for visitors, because it was barely midmorning when, of all people, Uchiha Sasuke interrupted her studying.

Sakura’s standards for polite behaviour had dropped so significantly that her first thought was: _well, at least he used the front door_. Even if Sasori was probably very displeased to be forced to leave his - whatever he was doing - to go answer it.

He‘d evidently let him in and then left Sasuke to navigate the place solo, because when he appeared in Sakura‘s doorway he was alone.

“Sasuke,” she said, blinking up from a textbook in shock. She was still in her bed, although now she was on top of the covers. She was still wearing the loose pants and oversize shirt she’d gone to bed in. “Hi.”

He grunted a greeting. “You haven’t been answering your calls,” he said in a clipped, unhappy voice, glowering at her with his hands jammed into his pockets. “Even,” he paused for a moment, “Even _Itachi_ says he hasn’t heard from you. Aren’t you supposed to be friends?”

Itachi had been trying to contact her? Sakura hoped nothing was wrong. “Oh. I lost my phone,” she said, shrugging. “Sorry. Are you going to come sit down?”

For a few seconds, Sasuke looked like he might just turn around and stalk out again. Sakura went back to her textbook. Sasuke was like a stray cat in a lot of ways, and sometimes it was just best to pretend to be doing something else until _he_ approached _you_.

“Yamanaka’s been harassing that idiot,” he said finally, slinking into her room. He did not sit down, which didn’t really surprise her. Still, he found a stretch of wall to lean against and looked about as comfortable there as he did anywhere.

“Ino?” Sakura scratched her head thoughtfully. “Ah, I should... maybe I’ll borrow somebody else’s phone and text her...”

They needed to catch up, anyway. If nothing else, Sakura needed to replace a heap of the clothing she’d sacrificed to her housemates’ crazy lifestyle, and Ino shopped like a vengeful god.

Sasuke gave her a resentful look. “You can’t use mine,” he said in a hard voice. Sakura didn’t blame him. If Ino got hold of Sasuke’s phone number, he’d never know peace. “How did you get hurt?” He nodded at her ankle.

Sakura followed his gaze to her bandaged joint. “Jaywalking,” she said unabashedly.

Sasuke’s facial expression communicated whole worlds of disdain, delicately blended with incredulity.

Sakura held up her hands, which just drew Sasuke’s attention to her bandaged fingers. “Yeah, it was dumb," she agreed, “And if Naruto asks, I expect you to tell him I dropped my phone and it got hit by a car _without_ me.”

Sasuke snorted. “Who says I’ll even talk to him?” he wondered.

Sakura managed not to roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. Sasuke and Naruto were practically brothers, and their aggression toward one another was only outmatched by their ridiculous co-dependence. “Okay, well, _if you talk to him_ ,” she said.

Sasuke grunted. Again.

She let her eyes return to her text book. “Naruto said you were doing some kind of science major,” she said after a few moments of silence.

His eyes flicked this way and that, and for a couple of seconds he said nothing. “Double-degree,” he said finally. “Science and law.”

“Wow,” she said, blinking. “Sounds busy.”

Sasuke shrugged. “It’s interesting,” he said, which didn’t really answer her implied question.

Still, Sasuke could probably afford that kind of heavy workload. His family was loaded - it wasn’t like he’d have to, say, get a job at a cafe to make ends meet or anything...

“Your family’s probably really pleased, though.”

He looked up at her sharply, dark eyes hard. “What?”

“I mean, they’re all... you know, invested in the law, right?” she clarified slowly. “Aren’t they all, uh, judges and lawyers and police officers?”

Sasuke nodded slowly.

He didn’t say anything on the topic.

Sakura averted her eyes and decided not to comment any further. “Well, medicine is - it’s great,” she said in a rush.

His expression didn’t change, but his shoulders loosened a little once she changed the subject. And despite her suspicion that he had absolutely no interest in listening to her prattle about her course, he seemed to relax as she went on.

But as with all interactions with Sasuke, his capacity for human interaction was quickly reached and before the hour was up he pushed off from her wall and left with only a vague wave and a grunted farewell.

In some ways, Sasuke actually had fewer social skills than his older brother - which was saying something. Apparently he was capable of taking the train for an hour and a half to visit and make sure she was still alive, but still incapable of pretending to have manners

“You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” Sakura muttered to her textbook once he’d gone.

Still.

It was surprisingly nice of him to visit. Even if his visit itself wasn’t, you know, that nice.

 

* * *

 

It was a couple of days before Sakura was supposed to be walking, following which she had a series of exercises that she'd been told would make sure she had a normal range of motion in her ankle in the future. They were boring, but every time she was tempted to skimp on them she reminded herself that her future might actually contain situations in which she had to run for her life.

"Not really," Sasori said to her, watching her carefully rotate her foot while he waited impatiently for the kettle to boil.

Sakura was perched on one of their mismatched kitchen chairs, nibbling at pieces of sliced banana while she concentrated on her exercises. "It might," she refuted, thinking of all the ways she could have gotten away from Sai without leaping out of a car.

"Probably not."

"But -"

"I have never had to run for my life before," Sasori said flatly, turning away as the kettle clicked. "Except from some of Deidara's... performances."

Sakura sighed.

Sasori poured the boiling water into his instant coffee. She expected that he would then leave to do... whatever it was he did... until an urgent need for caffeine drove him to emerge once more. Instead, he paused. "Are you returning to school today?"

She rubbed her forehead. "Yeah, I guess," she agreed. She didn't feel very excited about the prospect. Who knew who’d be on campus?

Sasori nodded. "I will take you in," he decided.

She blinked. _Sasori_ wanted to take her to class? "Really? You don't have to -"

"I really do," he said drily. "Besides, I need to hand in a paper. I'd do it online, but I was granted an extension, so it has to be signed." He shrugged one shoulder. "I'm leaving in twenty minutes," he added, eyeing her ankle. "Do not keep me waiting."

Sakura scrambled for her things.

It turned out that Sasori was a terrifying driver, in probably the opposite way Deidara was.

He was definitely a _safer_ driver, in that he didn’t make Sakura feel like she was going to be ground to paste against a building.

No, Sasori sat, blank-faced and heavy-eyed behind the wheel. He drove resentfully at the speed limit, stared balefully at every too-cautious driver, clenched his hands on the wheel at every red light.

Sakura shot him nervous looks every few minutes, because although he was still and he wasn’t actually _doing_ anything threatening, his simmering rage was thick enough to choke on. And, well, she’d seen him in a fight with her other housemates. He often won through sheer cold-minded savagery.

Maybe she wasn’t in danger from his _driving_ , but a driving Sasori seemed very, very dangerous.

“Thank you,” she said when he pulled up.

“Get out,” he said by way of response.

She did, as fast as her sprained ankle could take her.

Sasori took the opportunity to walk her to class, although he was clearly grinding his teeth at the delay she caused with every painful step.

“I have to go to engineering,” he finally said when she paused outside the medicine building.

Sakura nodded quickly. She’d never wished him gone quite so powerfully. She might have felt safer from the other students with him at her side, but his temper was a frightening thing. At this point, she’d take her chances with Sai.

She didn’t see him, though - which was comforting, in its way, because she wanted to be fully recovered when she did see him again. Fully recovered and maybe holding a baseball bat.

At some point it seemed as though poor Yamato had given up entirely, because he arrived at Kakashi’s class with notes and lecture slides. Sakura was pleased - not only was Yamato largely a more conscientious teacher, she felt as though she didn’t really want to see Kakashi for a couple of weeks.

Yamato didn‘t look like he felt as lucky as she did. “Okay,” he said very blandly and with a short sigh, leaning against Kakashi’s desk. “So: one, _voluntus aegroti suprema lex_ ; two, _salus aegroti superma lex_ , three, _primum non nocere_. Who knows the fourth?”

The silence was deafening.

“Um,” said Sakura, raising her hand tentatively. “I don’t know the Latin, but... fairness and equality in using health resources?”

“Justice,” Yamato nodded. “Good. Patient autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. Academically, most researchers consider these the most important principles of biomeical ethics.”

Yamato’s understanding of ethical debates was clearly more comprehensive than his knowledge of professional requirements and development or the clinical aspects of medical practice. His approach required a kind of beady-eyed analytical skill that was quite difficult for most of the class to grasp - the result of the fact that he did not actually study medicine, Sakura thought.

He’d wisely saved the last ten minutes for questions, but the class ran overtime anyway. Sakura used the extra time to organise her things carefully and get herself back on her feet. Her ankle, though carefully wrapped, would be giving her grief for a long time.

She was totally flabbergasted to find Jiraiya waiting for her outside the classroom door.

He was perched on a wall between two buildings, legs crossed, smoking a long-stemmed pipe contemplatively. Compared to the rest of the young university students, Jiraiya’s bright haori and traditional geta stood out fiercely. His pale hair shifted in the breeze like the tail of a restless cat.

Sakura chose not to notice that he had a very, very good view down most students’ shirts as they walked between buildings.

“Hello my cute Employee-san,” he said, fixing his gaze on her. He got to his feet and jumped down without flinching, prompting some odd looks from the surrounding students, and then inside about three seconds he’d managed to steal her bag from her.

“Jiraiya-san,” she protested, flailing for her books. “I need that!”

“I’ll give it back! Just consider it a gentlemanly gesture,” he beamed. “And what cute lady wouldn’t want a stud like me carrying her books to class?”

Stud.

Riiight.

“I think you’re delusional, Owner-san,” she said drily.

He twisted a finger in his ear like he was clearing it of excess ear wax. “Sorry, did you say something?”

She rolled her eyes, but let him shadow her to Tsunade’s class. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice. Once there, he followed her inside, deposited her bag, and then... didn’t leave.

“Uh, Jiraiya-san...” Sakura said, settling herself at her desk. “Are you waiting for something?”

He didn’t answer. A few moments later Tsunade-sama appeared in the doorway. Her eyes immediately locked on Jiraiya.

“Oh? What’re you doing here?” she asked in a voice gone soft and just a little dangerous.

“So suspicious,” he answered, looking as innocent as possible... which, for Jiraiya, wasn’t very innocent. “It’s going to be a clear night tonight,” he said, lips curving. “Come out for a drink?”

Tsunade leaned against the door frame, propped up by the swell of one hip. “Mmm,” she mused contemplatively. “If there’s nothing better to do,” she agreed lazily.

Sakura blinked. Were they --?

_Tsunade-sama?_

Jiraiya shot Sakura a wink on his way out the door. It closed softly behind him.

Nooooo.

Surely not.

“You know that old reprobate, Sakura?” Tsunade said, sharp eyes watching her. “Mou, and here I thought you were a good girl.”

Her mouth said one thing, but her expression was cynically amused. Her eyes drifted from Sakura’s surprised face to her bandaged hand and down to her ankle.

“An accident, huh?” she murmured thoughtfully.

Sakura swallowed. If Tsunade-sama knew Jiraiya, maybe she also knew...

But then, maybe she didn’t.

Finally, Tsunade’s heavy gaze shifted. “All right, sit down and shut up,” she instructed, raising her voice to reach all the students who’d arrived. Silence came on the heels of her words. “We have work to do.”

Tsunade’s classes were always a lot of work, but they were also satisfying and amazing and - and -

Sakura could listen to Tsunade talk for hours.

Yeah, okay, maybe she was a _little_ bit of a fan girl. But she accepted this philosophically - Tsunade, at least, was a very worthy object of admiration. She was clever, sharp, charismatic and beautiful to boot and Sakura kind of wanted to be her when she grew up.

She actually felt a little bit disappointed when the clock indicated that the four-hour lesson was almost over, which she supposed just made her a giant nerd.

“Sakura,” said Tsunade, with her usual complete lack of formality, once the class was over and the other students had drifted away.

Sakura was busy trying to redistribute the weight of her bag and books so she could carry them while putting the least pressure possible on her ankle. “Eh? Ah, Tsunade-sama,” she said, blinking up at her. “Sorry, I’m going, I’m just -”

Tsunade cut her off with a wave of her hand. “Let me see that,” she demanded, pointing at Sakura’s ankle.

“Uh,” said Sakura, who did not want Tsunade to be present when she found out if bandaging made her feet stink.

Tsunade made a frustrated noise. “Shoe off,” she ordered, pointing imperiously to the chair behind Sakura.

Sakura sat. Sakura removed her shoe very, very carefully. “The doctor said it was a sprain,” she said hesitantly.

Tsunade made a noise to acknowledge this, then knelt and unwound the compression bandage Sakura had been using and carefully examined the joint. There was a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows. Sakura winced when her fingers hit a particularly tender bit. “It is,” she agreed after a few moments, “but you still shouldn’t be walking on it. Do you have somebody to drive you home?”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama,” Sakura nodded. If nothing else, she was sure there’d be somebody at TRIVIA who could give her a lift somewhere.

Tsunade nodded. She re-wrapped Sakura’s ankle tightly with deft, practised hands, and was just snapping the clasps into place when a knock at the door made them both look up.

“Tsunade-hakase." It was a man in a dark cat suit with bright face paint. Sakura couldn’t actually place him - where had she seen him before?

“Kankuro-kun,” Tsunade said, rising gracefully to her feet.

“Just returning Shiro-san,” he said, grinning. It distorted the purple paint on his face.

Sai stepped out from behind him, carrying a model skeleton. “Where would you like me to leave it, Tsunade-hakase?” he asked in his smooth, bland voice.

He gave the room a dull, perfunctory once-over, eyes sweeping straight past Sakura sitting there with her broken fingers and her sprained ankle like he’d never seen her before - like she was just another piece of furniture.

She went tense. She couldn’t help it.

“Just in the corner somewhere,” she waved one hand. “I’ll take it back to the office later. I’m just going to walk Sakura to her lift,” she added.

“Oh,” said Sai, moving fluidly to set the model down in one corner, “you shouldn’t trouble yourself with something like that Tsunade-hakase,” he said politely. “Kankuro and I can take her to student parking if you like. Sakura-san, was it?” he said, turning his gut-twistingly insincere smile on her.

Tsunade shrugged. “All right,” she agreed, returning to her desk to gather up her class materials.

That, Sakura thought, must mean that despite her evident closeness to Jiraiya, Tsunade didn’t really know much about this shifty gang business.

Sakura swallowed. Her heart rate was steadily rising, but she knew she couldn’t say anything - there was no way Tsunade would believe her if she just came out and accused Sai of being suspicious in, well, in any way, really. He was a student at the university, ostensibly a complete stranger, and very polite.

She’d just come off looking like a crazy person trying to discredit a nice young man.

Sakura ground her teeth. “Yes. Haruno Sakura,” she said, bowing her head but keeping her eyes on him. She thought quickly. “Ah, I had some questions for you, Tsunade-sama, regarding the coursework this week - do you have a moment?”

“Hmm?” she looked up, glanced at her watch and sighed. “I’ve got five minutes,” she said grudgingly, and Sakura scrambled to come up with some questions about the coursework.

“We’ll wait for you, Sakura-san,” murmured Sai. “It’s a long walk to student parking with an injury like that.”

Kankuro looked between him and Sakura, but his expression was difficult to read with all that face paint. Perhaps, she thought, mind awhirl with anxiety, he did it on purpose.

Tsunade gave Sai an approving nod and returned her attention to Sakura.

“Um, about the quiz results,” Sakura blurted, “I lost marks for clarity of expression, could you--?”

“Mmm,” Tsunade grunted, and then dove into an explanation about the proper use of technical medical terminology, and how colloquialisms were very useful in some situations - discussion with patients or public health contexts - specificity in discussing clinical practice with other academics was a requirement.

“It’s really a matter of judgement,” she finished, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug. “If I recall, though, you did very well other than that, so there’s no need to worry.” She gave Sakura a rare, pleased smile.

“Now, sorry, Sakura - I have a date with a really big bottle of wine.” She paused. “And Jiraiya, I guess,” she added as an afterthought.

Then she breezed out the door, leaving Sakura alone with Sai and Kankuro.

Sakura swallowed nervously.

“Coming, Sakura-san?” Sai said politely, flashing his obnoxious insincere smile.

“Aa,” she agreed, stooping to get her bag. Stupid, she decided. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have been carrying something with which to defend herself in _exactly this situation._

She’d known she’d be in danger eventually but she’d done nothing to prepare for it.

Idiot, she thought. She picked up her bag and slung it over one shoulder, trying to gauge her ability to run from the two men with a sprained ankle. Maybe if she swung the bag at one of them? She wouldn’t have to run far, really, the university campus was...

...actually not that populated at this time of night.

Dammit.

“You’re late,” said a much more familiar voice. Sakura - and Sai - whirled to face the sound.

She could have wept with relief upon seeing Sasori in the doorway, backlit by the halogen lights in the hallway outside.

“Sasori-san,” she said.

“Don’t make me wait for you,” he said shortly, although his eyes were on Sai. He didn’t even glance at Kankuro, which - well, Sakura didn’t know what that meant. “It’s my turn to make dinner.”

He disappeared out the doorway, shoes clicking gently on the floor.

“It is?” Sakura blinked. She counted. It was. “It is,” she muttered, hobbling after him.

She wasn’t entirely surprised when Sai and Kankuro fell into step with them as they headed for the carpark, but she didn’t like it. “Don’t you have _anywhere_ else to be?” she asked them.

“You’re not the only one who parks in student parking,” Kankuro pointed out. “The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

Sasori snorted softly. He was shorter than both of them, she noticed.

Student parking was a poorly-lit, ten minute walk away from the medicine building, and it took even longer with Sakura trying and failing to keep up. Sasori didn’t say anything, but she could almost _hear_ his patience wearing thin.

It was after six, so the car park was empty of people and had only a few cars in it. The bitumen underfoot was cracked and pitted and the lines denoting spaces were worn.

Sai turned, reached over his shoulder, and fluidly withdrew a sword.

A _sword_.

A short, slightly curved sword whose edge shone like a smile under the halogen lights.

Because apparently Sakura was now acquainted with people who kept swords strapped to their spines during art class?

Behind her, Sakura could feel the tension in Kankuro’s body as well, the sudden coiling of muscle and shifting of feet. She looked to Sasori -

Sasori wasn’t there.

Sasori was _not there_.

Shit.

Sasori wasn’t there, and Sai had a sword.

Oh, also, her ankle was sprained and her fingers were broken and she was unarmed and carrying a giant bag full of books.

To top it all off, there was nobody to hear her scream.

Sakura could feel panic start to unravel in her gut, a nervous fluttering that travelled along her nerves. She thought she might vomit.

“Sakura-san,” said Sai, but whatever else he was about to say was cut off by a startled noise and a muffled grunt.

“Drop the sword,” came Sasori’s bored voice.

Sai’s eyes shifted and focused on something behind her.

Cautiously, trying to keep him in view, Sakura turned her head.

From the corner of her eye she could see Kankuro with his head forced back. His exposed adam’s apple bobbed against something that glinted.

Wire, Sakura realised, watching a tiny drop of blood roll down his pale neck.

“Drop the sword," Sasori repeated.

Sai stilled. Even from her position, Sakura could see why. It wasn’t just a threat - or, if it was, it was a very good one: Sasori looked as though it didn’t matter to him at all. There was an easy placidity in his face that said that it was all up to Sai.

Kankuro, that guy in the stupid face paint and the weird cat suit...

He’d live, or he’d die, and it didn’t matter to Sasori either way.

For a few moments, nobody moved. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. Distantly, Sakura heard the sound of a car horn.

Several expressions flitted behind Sai’s eyes.

Finally, he lowered his sword to the ground. He let go with a soft clink.

Sakura exhaled a relieved breath, but she was the only one. If anything, the tension just mounted.

“Sakura-san,” said Sasori, “get in the car.”

There was a scraping sound as the car keys skidded across the bitumen to her. Sakura took them.

They waited in absolute silence while she limped slowly toward the ugly - but very recognisable - car. She hesitated when she realised that with Sasori’s hands busy, she would have to get in the driver’s seat and start the car.

Now was probably not a good time to tell him she couldn’t drive.

She got in the car.

Fine. Okay. She took a deep breath and put the keys in the ignition and listened to the dull rumble as the engine turned over.  
She could do this, she thought, gripping the wheel and feeling out the pedals with her foot.

The back door opened, and Kankuro was shoved face-down into the back seat. His hands were twisted up behind him, caught in wire that was thin and sharp and almost invisible in the nocturnal half-light inside the car.

Sasori followed him into the back seat.

“Sasori,” said Sakura nervously, gripping the wheel. “I don’t have a license.” She had driven a car all of three times in her life, and not very well, either.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” said Kankuro, sounding strained. There was a sharp cracking noise, a muffled but heartfelt curse, and he subsided into silence.

“Ignore him. You can’t possibly be worse than Deidara,” Sasori said. He sounded just as calm now as he had when he’d been threatening Kankuro.

That, Sakura supposed, was true.

Okay.

She hit the accelerator.

They drove.

In the rearview mirror Sakura could see Sai lean down to collect his sword. His skin was very pale in the pool of light from the streetlamp and his irritating smile was nowhere to be seen.

White-knuckled, Sakura drove them out of the parking lot and into the street, feeling really, really thankful that there was minimal traffic.

They were only four blocks away when Sasori directed her to pull over. There, he shoved Kankuro out of the back seat and onto the footpath. Sakura winced at the noise he made when he scraped against the pavement, but, well --

It was a kinder exit than she’d had from Sai’s care. She steeled herself.

“Move,” Sasori told her, and she scrambled awkwardly over the gearshift and into the passenger seat, cringing when she smacked her injured ankle against the dashboard.

They left Kankuro struggling out of the sharp wire on the footpath and drove away.

Sakura sagged against the cool, exposed metal of the car’s passenger door. Her heart was racing furiously. She exhaled slowly.

“You’re all right,” Sasori said.

“What?" She glanced at him, half-certain she’d imagined his voice.

Sasori didn’t repeat himself. His face didn’t look any different. Street lamps flashed across his skin as he drove them home.

Sakura sighed and closed her eyes. She felt very tired all of a sudden. “You said it’s your night to cook, right?”

Sasori hummed his assent.

“Okay,” she mumbled. “Good. Kakuzu’s such a goddamn cheapskate.”

If Sasori made a response, she didn’t hear it - she was already dozing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [My tumblr is over here at tozettewrites](http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> I am easily inspired by writing prompts and I welcome random questions. Come say hi! Or, you know, don't. Both are okay. :P


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nine people sit around a room and bitch at each other, and Sasori cooks dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had a hell of a week, so it comes as no surprise to me that the latest chapter is 100% people yelling at each other about nothing. Sorry guys.

The very next thing Sakura knew was that somebody was poking her in the cheek and something silky was trailing across her face.

“Sa-ku-ra-chaan,” said a familiar voice.

She squinted her eyes open.

Deidara fluttered his eyelashes at her from about an inch away. He was leaning over her in the open car door, silhouetted by the light from their house. “Wakey-wakey,” he chimed cheerfully.

Another day she might have flinched or yelped at the surprise of seeing him suddenly so very close. Today she reached up with her uninjured hand and put her whole palm against his face, propelling him out of the way so she could get out of the car.

He made a muffled squawk and backed off, rubbing his nose. It was all quite exaggerated, but it made her crack a tired smile.

“Who said you could call me Sakura-chan?” Sakura wondered, raising her eyebrows at Deidara. She tested her ankle carefully - it was always a bit weird after she’d been sitting for too long. It held her weight stiffly, aching all the while, but it held her weight. Good enough.

The door to the house was open, and Sasori wasn’t in the car, so she assumed he’d left her behind.

“You let _Tobi_ \--”

“Hai, hai,” she acknowledged with a half-smile, cutting him off with a wave of her hand.

“I’ll let you call _me_ anything you like,” he said, reaching out to help her balance. She took his arm gratefully.

She couldn’t tell if that was meant to be innuendo or not. Whatever. “If it means so much to you, you can call me Sakura-chan. Or,” she added thoughtfully, letting go of his arm once they were on the flat and easily navigable floor of the house. “Sakura-sama. Hime? Sakura-hime. Hmm...” she gave him an arch look and tapped her chin thoughtfully.

Deidara grinned at her, all teeth and bright eyes. “Sakura-sensei?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

She rolled her eyes.

Somehow, just like that, she felt better - even after her awful afternoon. Maybe _he_ should be Deidara-sensei.

“Sasori-sempai~” he called out, speeding down the corridor. “What are you cooking? Do you need help?”

“Shut up,” Sasori growled from somewhere in the kitchen. “The house is only so large, idiot. You don’t need to scream.”

Sakura smiled, briefly, at the comedy show that was her household, and then she shrieked as she was hoisted off her feet and spun wildly around.

“SAKURA-CHAAAN~” Tobi sang out. He was holding her easily - _easily_ \- with a strength that was kind of scary, and doing an astonishingly coordinated cha-cha down the corridor while she flailed in his arms.

“Hello... Tobi-san,” she said once she realised what was going on. It seemed best to wait it out.

Something hit Tobi over the head. He staggered. Sakura yelped, because he was going to _drop her_ and then _fall on top of her_ and it was going to really, really hurt --

\-- and he swung sideways, somehow avoiding the tumble she’d thought was inevitable. Her back hit the wall of the hallway, and for a second she was stuck, feet dangling off the ground, between him and the wall with her face crushed into the curve of his neck.

Tobi smelled like hot sugar and some unfamiliar antiperspirant.

Weird.

“If you dent it,” Kakuzu’s voice drawled from somewhere Sakura couldn’t see through Tobi’s fluffy hair, “you replace it.”

“Whatever,” sneered Deidara, and there was an odd swooshing noise. “Stop harassing Sakura-sensei.”

Tobi leaned back, giving Sakura enough air to breathe, and gently slid her down the wall. She peered around his body to see what was going on.

“Did you just hit him with a frying pan?” she asked, blinking slowly.

Much belatedly, Tobi rubbed his head and whined. “Owww. Deidara-senpai, it hurts...”

Deidara hefted the frying pan in his general direction. “Tobi...” he growled. It was always kind of weird to see Deidara trying to look intimidating. Sometimes he could pull it off, and other times it just made Sakura aware that he wasn’t that much taller than her and he was pretty and...

It wasn’t necessarily fair, but that was how it worked. And Tobi, actually, had a much greater capacity to look intimidating, but he never seemed to use it.

She leaned against the wall heavily and laughed, because they were all such idiots. This - this stupid nonsense with frying pans and yelling and Tobi acting like a four year old - felt safe and normal, and somehow blessedly familiar.

Deidara paused.

Tobi stopped mid-rub. “Sakura-chan?” he asked hesitantly.

Kakuzu appeared, a grim shadow in the kitchen doorway. “Sasori says if you break her you don’t get dinner,” he informed them flatly.

“Then what’s he gonna do with all that soup, yeah?”

“Ooh, ooh, he should give it to Itachi-nii,” Tobi said, waving one hand excitedly. “Itachi-nii’s a terrible cook,” he added, as though this was a fact to be celebrated.

Sakura snorted back another laugh. She felt light and silly, and then, abruptly, like her knees were going to give out. “Okay,” she interrupted, pushing Tobi gently away and moving gingerly toward the kitchen. “I need to sit down.”

“Tobi will take you!” Tobi declared, before sweeping her up in what she could best describe as an _ambulatory bear hug_ and bounding into the kitchen, where he happily deposited her at the kitchen table.

Sakura reeled. “I’m not a stuffed animal!” she snapped, smacking him lightly on the chest. “You can’t just carry me around like a sack of --”

She was cut off by an enormous _CLANG_ , which was made when Deidara smacked his frying pan into the back of Tobi’s head, sending him sprawling across the kitchen floor.

He would have collided with Sasori’s knees, except Sasori side-stepped him gracefully and continued chopping vegetables as though nothing had happened. “Deidara,” he warned.

“He started it,” said Deidara innocently.

“Sempai~!” Tobi wailed from the floor, turning a betrayed look on Deidara. “Tobi started nothing! Tobi is a good --”

“Shut up before I _finish_ it,” Sasori said.

Tobi winced, stopped talking, and crab-walked across the floor over to where Sakura was sitting at the table. He clutched her good leg and peered up at her.

Awkwardly, she patted his head. “It’s okay, Tobi-san,” she said consolingly, because she did feel a little guilty. They were so _mean_ to him, and as far as she knew he was just... mentally disordered, or something. She didn’t really know. He was just different.

He leaned willingly into her patting like an oversize house cat. With a snort of amusement, she scratched behind his ears. It was something of a pity he was so childish, she thought, because he was sweet and seemed sincerely nice - and, well, you know. He was cute, in the same dark-eyed, angular way Itachi and Sasuke were - except taller, and broader and --

Yeah, perving on Tobi made her feel like a giant creepy paedophile, though. She patted his head absently. His hair wasn’t as soft as Deidara’s, but then, whose was? _Sakura’s_ hair wasn’t as soft as Deidara’s.

Zetsu trailed down from somewhere upstairs.

Sakura eyed him. “Where did you come from?” she asked suspiciously.

He tilted his head, mechanically. “Upstairs,” he said.

“...from my balcony?” she asked slowly.

He looked at her like she was an idiot. “Obviously.”

She took a deep breath. At this point, she supposed, it would seem unfair to tell Zetsu he couldn’t climb in through her balcony door. God knows everybody else she knew did. It didn’t stop her from resenting it, though.

Zetsu gave her a strange look.

She eyed him right back.

“Owww,” said Tobi, pawing at her hand. She looked down and unclenched her fist.

“Sorry,” she said, patting gently. She hadn’t meant to yank his hair out. “Hey, do you think you could get me my bag? It’s next to the door, I just need --”

“Haaaai~” he said, before she had even finished, and leapt up to dash down the corridor.

There was a yelp and a clatter and a crash that made Sakura wince. “Hello, Kisame-san!” Tobi cheered, like he hadn’t just collided with a giant wall of muscle head on.

“Kisame-san?” Sakura murmured, looking toward Kakuzu. She hadn’t noticed before, but now she saw that he was peering intently at the screen of his laptop. He looked very busy, and she wasn’t sure she should have interrupted.

He grunted. “There needs to be a meeting to discuss some problems,” he said.

She frowned. “Is this... about the black ops thing?”

He made a noise. “More or less.”

“Then... why didn’t we do it last week?”

“Mondays are the best day. Half of us are already in the one spot, and Konan-san doesn’t do any extra baking for the shop.”

Sakura nodded. That much was true, but it didn’t answer her question. “Why didn’t we do it last Monday, then?"

At this, Kakuzu looked up. He gave her a blank expression. “Last Monday was my night to cook.”

And then he returned to whatever he was doing on his computer. Right, Sakura thought, because the extra instant noodles would really have put a terrible hole in his budget.

Tobi appeared with her bag and set it on the table in front of her and then, rather strangely, plopped himself down at her knee again. She peered at him. “Er,” she said.

He smiled.

Sakura didn’t really understand Tobi.

Gingerly, she patted him on the head. “Thank you.”

Kisame pulled out a chair, ignoring whatever weirdness Tobi was causing all of them. “Looks like you’ve had a rough week,” he said to Sakura, eyeing her bandaged hand.

“I’ve had better,” she admitted. “No Itachi?”

He shook his head. “He has some kind of test or something? Mid-term? He did ask me to tell you to replace your phone.. unless you were intentionally avoiding him instead of straight-up telling him you don’t want to talk, in which case I’m gonna break your other hand,” he added in precisely the same tone.

“He said all that, did he?” asked Sakura, secure in the knowledge that she didn’t want to avoid Itachi at all.

“It’s a combined sentiment,” Kisame told her, showing her his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“You really should get it replaced, yeah,” Deidara interrupted, kicking out a chair and perching on its edge. Somebody had pulled a bunch of other chairs into the kitchen from various places in the house. None of them matched, but they might just seat everyone. The one Deidara picked was between Sakura and Kisame - which was probably a good choice, she thought, because they’d never get anything done if he sat next to Hidan or Tobi.

Tobi peered over her knee at Deidara, blinking huge sloe eyes at him. “What happened to Sakura-chan’s phone? Was it when Tobi picked her up?”

“Why are you asking me?” Deidara snapped back at him. “It’s her phone.”

“But Deidara-sempai--”

“Just stop talking,” Deidara growled.

“Children,” rumbled Kisame, casually flinging a huge, muscled arm over Deidara’s shoulders.  
Deidara froze for a second, but then something flickered across his face and Sakura could see his hand drifting toward his pocket. She inched away from the explosion waiting to happen - which might be a literal explosion, knowing Deidara.

“The first one who pulls a weapon will regret it,” Kakuzu said without looking up.

Deidara looked like he was still thinking about it, but Sakura didn’t like his chances if he tried to take on both Kisame and Kakuzu at the same time.

Kisame grinned.

Tobi... rubbed his head on her hand.

She looked down at him.

He blinked up innocently.

“I lost my phone that night, yes, Tobi-san," she clarified, remembering that he had actually asked a question. Sakura sighed and pulled one of her textbooks from her bag. The last thing she wanted to do was study, but...

She managed to allow the bickering to flow over her while she read her book. Tobi’s head became a warm weight on her thigh, which she mostly ignored. He was weird, but he wasn’t hurting anybody there.

While there were a lot of things Sakura could ignore, none of them was Hidan, who was _already yelling_ as he came down the corridor, and, really, Hidan? Really? Was it absolutely necessary to make as much noise as humanly possible at _every moment_ of _every day_? All she heard was “--fucking _asking for_ it, okay, what the hell difference does it make? He’s a heathen with no respect for fucking any-- Ow!”

Sakura scowled up from her book, only to discover that Konan was dragging him through the kitchen doorway by the ear. One side of his face was red, and Sakura thought it’d be coming up in a lovely bruise quite soon. He had a split lip.

It wasn’t at all weird that Hidan’s total lack of brain-to-mouth filter would get him into trouble, but Sakura couldn’t help but wonder what on earth he’d done to Konan to earn such treatment. She was usually calm and implacable, even in the face of the most entitled customers at the cafe.

But then Pein trailed in after her, looking pale and exhausted, and walking a little too stiffly with one hand pressed to his gut, and Sakura thought she knew exactly what had happened here.

He slumped into the chair on Sakura’s other side, ignoring Tobi the same way he might ignore a piece of furniture. He looked _terrible_.

She really had thought the sickness thing was a cover for some horrible gang-related injury, but...

He looked sick. Really sick.

“Pein-san?” she asked gently, attracting his attention. “Can I... get you anything?” She paused. “Tea?” Or, maybe, like, an ambulance?

He gave her bandaged ankle a wry look. “No, I don’t think so,” he said softly, something that she regarded more as a statement of fact than a declining of her offer. “I’m getting better,” he added.

“I’d hate to think what you looked like before, yeah,” Deidara said, not very tactfully. Then: “Ow, what -- Sempai,” he said plaintively, rubbing his head.

Sasori was indeed standing behind them, watching them with his languid eyes through a trail of steam from his coffee cup. He lowered his fist. He had clearly finished with all of his chopping because there was a huge pot boiling away on the stove top and the benches were clean and tidy.

There was a thump from across the room as Konan pushed Hidan into a chair. Her facial expression was bordering on glacial. After a few seconds of hostile silence between them, she turned away. She glided serenely back toward Pein, where she settled her hands on his shoulders gently. He looked up with an expression of surprising affection.

Sakura smiled a little, just quietly, at the sweetness of the picture.

“Idiot,” muttered Kakuzu in Hidan’s general direction. Hidan made an offended noise.

“Where are the others?” Sakura asked quickly, hoping to get her question in before Hidan began talking again. Kisame didn’t move his arm from Deidara’s shoulders, and Sakura didn’t like the look Sasori was giving him. She wondered if he was still carrying that wire.

“Madara-sama has a meeting. Tobi is here to make sure Madara-sama knows what happened here,” he added, lifting his chin proudly.

Sakura bit her tongue on what was bound to be a truly condescending comment. “That’s very kind of you,” she said instead. She glanced at Kisame, who shrugged and pulled out his phone. “I’ll put Itachi on speaker when we actually talk about this.”

“I’m not sure where Jiraiya is,” Pein said tiredly, “since he’s not answering my calls.”

“He’s out with Tsunade-sama,” Sakura said, remembering. And, ew. He was out with _Tsunade-sama_. Sakura liked Jiraiya, but she was certain Tsunade could do better.

“Ah,” said Konan with a tiny, knowing smile.

Pein snorted softly.

“Where’s the other fucker?” Hidan wondered. “And Zetsu?”

“He has a consultation in maximum security,” Pein said carelessly, and ignored the second part of his question.

“Zetsu is _right next to you_ , yeah.”

Hidan looked left as though he’d not noticed the other man at all, which Sakura thought was unlikely because although Zetsu could be quiet he was difficult to miss, just, you know... visually speaking.

“Just because somebody’s not shrieking at the top of his lungs doesn’t mean he isn’t there,” Kakuzu drawled, saying what everyone had to be thinking.

“ _Bite me_ ,” Hidan snapped. “Are we going to eat or not?” he asked Sasori.

Sasori returned his impatience with a long, silent look. Then, “There’s raw vegetables in lukewarm stock,” he informed him, nodding toward the stove. “Go for it.”

“Would it kill you to put some actual meat in there?” Hidan bitched, scrunching up his nose in distaste.

Only because he was so close did Sakura hear Pein mutter, “His tongue is meat, right?” to Konan.

“Would _you_ eat it?” she murmured back.

Sakura coughed to cover up her sudden laughter. If Tobi heard that exchange, he didn’t show it.

Sasori, on the other hand, ignored Hidan completely. Kakuzu made a valiant effort to do the same, but his eyebrow was twitching.

“Does that mean that everyone who’s going to be here is here?” Sakura prompted gently.

Konan nodded. “It does.”

“Ah!" Tobi sprung to his feet - from his seat right next to Sakura’s knee.

Sakura yelped and fell sideways into Deidara. “Tobi!” he snarled, wobbling into Kisame. Kisame did not move, because he was a giant wall of muscle. Instead he was fiddling with his phone one-handed. He unhooked his arm from Deidara’s shoulder to push him away - rather gently, all things considered.

Tobi did not seem to have heard him. “Tobi will minute the meeting!” he said, waving a notepad.

Where had the notepad come from? Sakura did not know. She returned herself upright using Deidara’s knee for balance. “Sorry,” she muttered to him.

He rolled his eyes and waved it off.

“No,” said Pein. His voice got hoarser as he raised it, “nobody will minute the meeting. It’a bad enough that Itachi is doing this over the phone - I won’t have you writing it all down, too,” he gave Tobi a severe look.

Tobi wilted. “But Madara-sama --”

“Will be filled in by other members,” Pein interrupted. “What we’re here to talk about is the recent aggressive actions taken by the group known as black ops toward our people.”

“By ‘our people’,” Sasori interjected, “you mean Sakura-san.”

“Please fill us in,” came Itachi’s voice, tinny but plenty loud, from Kisame’s phone speakers. “I am sure I’m not the only person who hasn’t heard of an attack on Sakura. Last I heard she was injured jaywalking.” If there was a little bit of dull disbelief in his voice, well, she couldn't blame him.

Sakura coughed. “Uh, well, I had to tell Sasuke something,” she said.

“Hmm,” said Itachi neutrally.

There was a brief, fairly pedestrian recap of the incident, which Sakura would forever remember as That Time I Jumped Out Of A Car. Konan addressed it casually, as though it all made perfect sense.

“Ehh?” Tobi yelled, turning to peer at her. “Sakura-chan, you _jumped out of a car_?” he asked, clutching at his cheeks.

A second later he was clutching at _her_ , like he thought that maybe she was going to disappear and be inexplicably smeared onto the bitumen retroactively. She patted his arm gently. “I’m pretty much over it now, Tobi-san,” she pointed out.

“What the fuck,” Hidan said incredulously, yelling over the top of both of them. “YOU WENT TO PICK HER UP.”

“Ah, ah!” Tobi waved one of his arms in a panic. “Tobi forgot to ask!”

“You -” Hidan’s voice sounded strangled.

Deidara grabbed Sakura’s text book, leaned over, and smacked Tobi in the stomach with it.

“Ow,” Tobi whined, although he didn’t really sound pained. It sounded more like he was saying it out of politeness than anything else.

Itachi’s sigh was probably a lot louder than he’d intended it to be, because the phone microphone picked it up and amplified it with static. “Are your injuries severe, Sakura?” he asked.

Deidara flailed one arm. “‘Sakura’?” he said, sounding offended, and Sakura had the sudden premonition that they were going to have another discussion about honorifics soon.

“Shut up,” Sasori said, more in the tone of an instruction than an insult, “the sooner this is over, the sooner we can eat and I can leave.”

Deidara tilted his head back to glare at Sasori, who returned his look with one of colossal, overwhelming boredom.

“I broke a couple fingers and sprained my ankle,” Sakura said to the phone, trying to ignore Sasori and Deidara beside her left ear. “I’ll be fine in a little while.”

Itachi made an assenting noise and subsided into silence.

Pein nodded. “It was Sakura-san this time, but next time it could be anybody,” he said to the group, somehow effortlessly bringing their attention back to him.

“Next time was tonight,” Sakura said wearily, staring at the table. There was a pause. “Sai carries a _sword_ to class,” she added, sounding about as disgusted as she felt.

There was silence for a few moments.

"I see," said Pein, blinking at her.

She wasn't sure why she felt like cringing.

Tobi scratched his head. “Sakura-chan,” he said slowly in the ensuing silence, “maybe you should consider learning some kind of self-defence when you get better.”

She nodded. “I am,” she said. “Kakashi- sensei is teaching me.”

“Kakashi-sensei?” Tobi said in a voice gone curiously flat. “Hatake Kakashi?”

Sakura turned to look at him. “You know Kakashi-sensei?” she asked curiously. “I knew he knew Jiraiya, but --”

“Kakashi? The man who broke into your bedroom?” Zetsu interrupted, tilting his head.

“A man broke into your bedroom?” Kisame raised his eyebrows.

“Hatake Kakashi broke into your bedroom?” Tobi's voice went from merely 'flat' to 'subzero' in less than a second.

Sakura froze. There was nothing soft and silly about that voice, and she wasn't sure what was going on. She looked at his face, but his expression was all wrong. He looked strangely adult, watching her with hard eyes and a tight mouth. The entire table had gone still.

"Tobi," murmured Itachi's voice softly.

His eyelashes fluttered, but his expression didn't waver.

“Er,” said Sakura, looking around at the other faces. Mostly they were wary looks directed at Tobi. She had no idea what was going on.

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” she said hopefully.

“I _did_ offer to hold him down for you,” Hidan said in a plaintive voice.

Tobi's mood turned on a dime, and Sakura still had no idea what had just happened. It didn't seem to matter anymore, though, because everybody relaxed again. “Hidan-san is so nice,” he said, tearing up a little. “Sakura-chan should have taken him up on his offer! It’s very wrong for strange men to break into a lady’s bedroom,” he said firmly, patting the top of Sakura’s head like he was assuring himself she still existed.

“ _Shut up_ ,” said Kakuzu, slamming one hand onto the table. He closed the lid of his laptop with a click. “We’re all caught up. What will our response be?”

“EXPLOSIVES, YE--”

Sasori covered Deidara’s mouth with one hand. “Continue,” he drawled.

Pein sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Kick the shit out of their people,” Hidan said, shrugging.

“That’s your response to everything,” Zetsu pointed out.

“Because it works,” Hidan said, giving him a grumpy look.

“It’s not very nice,” Zetsu murmured. “We should cut off their hands instead,” he added thoughtfully.

Hidan’s grumpy look turned into a slowly spreading smile. “Or that,” he agreed.

Zetsu nodded.

(Konan reached around from behind Pein and replaced his hand with hers, rubbing tiny soothing circles with her fingertips. His eyes fell to half-mast almost immediately. Sakura melted almost as fast as Pein did. So cute!)

“Intelligence on black ops is thin,” Itachi’s voice said in a smooth monotone. “I submit we should invest some effort into finding out more about their group and organisation, which will require that we do not act immediately. Once the information is gathered, I can pass it onto the police force, which will likely cause them more inconvenience and loss of profit than a few beatings.”

“As usual, Itachi-san advises caution,” said Kisame, grinning.

“I do,” Itachi agreed. “Violence and non-violence are not ideologies, they are tactics. We should reserve violence until it becomes truly necessary,” he said without inflection, ignoring the scoffing noise from Hidan, “and then hold nothing back.”

Sakura remembered the meaty thunk of a boning knife going right through Hidan’s hand. Itachi, her hindbrain reminded her, could be  _really_   _scary_.

Kakuzu grunted his agreement. “Efficient, low-risk and cost-effective,” he pointed out.

“I’m all for gathering more information, if I get a vote,” Sakura agreed. Then, at Deidara’s wounded look, “Do _you_ want to end up blowing up the wrong person?”

And then Sakura had to take a moment to process, because she had to absorb the idea that this was a phrase that had come out of her mouth. It sounded totally reasonable in her voice, but --

“To be perfectly honest,” Deidara said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “right person or wrong person doesn’t really concern me. Art is amoral, yeah.”

\-- but then Deidara spoke and she remembered what crazy actually sounded like.

“...what?” he asked, blinking.

She made an effort to smooth out the expression on her face. “Nothing,” she assured him.

“You don’t get a vote. _Nobody_ gets a vote. This isn’t a democracy,” rasped Pein from beneath Konan’s fingers, which had migrated to scraping deftly through his hair. Sakura wasn’t entirely sure she knew she was doing it.

“Oh,” said Sakura slowly. “Then what’s the meeting for?” she asked, puzzled.

“So I can hear people’s thoughts,” Pein said.

Sakura’s brow furrowed.

“An informed dictatorship is a benevolent dictatorship,” he told her gravely.

“I... see.” Sakura wasn’t entirely sure that she did see, but it seemed better than pursuing the conversation.

Konan’s hands stilled. “Is that the course of action we want to take?” she asked, bringing the discussion back to the point again.

“No,” Hidan said.

“It seems wise,” Zetsu said, “stupid, though; we could just cut off their hands,” he added.

Kisame gave a shrug. The heavy ropes of muscles in his shoulders bunched and shifted.

“It is the wisest course of action,” Itachi said.

“I agree,” Konan said thoughtfully. “While a lack of immediate response seems as though it might pose more threat to Sakura - implying, perhaps, that there will be no retaliation for attacks on her - a violent response before we know our enemies could launch us into a turf war at a grave disadvantage.”

Pein nodded. “Agreed. Alright, we’re done here. Itachi, Kakuzu, dedicate some time to researching these guys. Tobi, remember to keep Madara-san in the loop. I’ll keep the others informed.”

Sasori moved away to attend to his soup, and there was immediately the outbreak of an argument between Hidan and Zetsu - which seemed, as far as Sakura could tell, to actually be between Hidan and _half_ of Zetsu, which....

She wasn’t quite sure how that worked.

She wasn’t paying attention to that, though, not really. She was frowning about Pein’s last comment. The others. _Plural_. There it was again. As far as Sakura could count, there was definitely a member of this testosterone-addled group of lunatics she hadn’t met yet.

“Who is the other person?” she asked, frowning at Pein.

He’d slumped wearily back into his chair, and now he cracked one eye open. “Mm, no, you haven’t met,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “That’s Orochimaru-sensei. He’s an old friend of Jiraiya’s.”

Sakura blinked. “Orochi...maru?” she repeated.“Er, is that his birth name?” she asked delicately.

“As far as I know,” Pein said, “although you wouldn’t be the first to ask.”

Sakura valiantly held herself back from asking if he ate children, but it was a near thing. He was a friend of Jiraiya’s, after all - and Jiraiya’s friends included Tsunade-sama and Kakashi-sensei, after all - they were _odd_ , but not bad people. No, Sakura was sure that any friend of Jiraiya’s would be perfectly nice.

For, you know, a gangster.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sakura's comment about 'eating children' is a play on Orochimaru's name. While the characters for 'dai' and 'hebi' technically mean 'big snake,' when you put them together like that it becomes 'Orochi,' the legendary dragon. The story goes that, like many western dragons, Orochi liked chomping down on nice young ladies. Eventually, some stuff happened and Susanoo got kicked out of heaven for picking on Amaterasu, then ran into Orochi and his victims. Susanoo killed him and ripped the Kusanagi no Tsurugi out of his body. ~~True story~~.
> 
> While Japanese naming conventions are quite different to Western ones - in that the meaning of people's names is inferred differently because of the way the characters work as representations of _meaning_ rather than of _sound_ the way English letters do (...loosely) - it still strikes me that she might think it was weird to run into somebody whose parents chose to name them after a _mythological man-eating monster._
> 
> If I'm wrong, though, you're absolutely welcome to correct me. You are also welcome to come find me on tumblr at tozettewrites.tumblr.com and ask me prying (or non-prying) questions or harass me for updates ~~to Hit The Ground Running, I know, I know~~.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which: Ino. Basically.

Dinner was a disaster, but that was pretty much usual. Sakura found herself oddly pleased to be sitting next to Pein. He looked truly ill, and she thought he probably wouldn’t be making any sudden movements, or lunging at her, or throwing things any time soon.

Sakura’s standards for civil behaviour were dropping daily, because apparently she now lived with actual children.

Pein ate the soup, but from the expression on his face it could have tasted like pretty much anything and he wouldn’t have known the difference.

“Sasori-san’s soup is amaaazing,” Tobi pronounced cheerfully, waving his spoon around. He scooped up a spoonful and shoved it in his mouth, then froze. The next noise he made sounded a lot like “ _Meep_.”

“...Tobi-san?” Sakura asked, peering down at him. He was still sitting on the floor. She wasn’t sure why.

“But hot,” he croaked, looking up at her with flushed cheeks. “Hot.”

“It’s almost like it just came off the stove or something, yeah,” Deidara drawled.

“Be nice.” Sakura gave his ankle an admonishing tap with the side of her good foot.

He smacked his heel into her shin.

Sakura turned a very cool look onto him.

Deidara lifted his chin and raised his eyebrows right back at her.

This, she realised distantly, was _exactly_ how brawls in this house started. It was truly alarming how much of her willpower it took to disengage. She sniffed and turned her head away.

From the other side of Deidara, Kisame laughed. “Scared?” he asked.

“Injured,” she responded loftily.

Deidara leaned into her side so their shoulders were brushing and grinned. “Suuuure.”

“I hate you,” she muttered in a low voice, smiling a little.

“I hate soup spoons,” Zetsu said sadly.

Kisame leaned over and clapped him on the shoulder, once. “It’s going to be okay,” he assured him, and then had to jerk his hand away when Zetsu made a jab for it with a stray bread knife.

“Are you a vegetarian now?" Hidan asked, peering at Sasori with an expression of great and towering distrust. He smacked the top of his soup with the flat of his spoon, making an odd _thwap_ noise.

“No,” said Sasori. He ate his soup.

“Well, then -”

Kakuzu threw a fork at his face. “Shut up and eat your dinner. It’s free.”

Hidan caught it and threw it back at him.

Konan’s hand shot out across Kakuzu, almost brushing his nose, and snatched the fork deftly out of the air. “When it’s your turn to cook, Hidan-san,” she said in a serene voice, “I’m sure there will be meat. If you prefer not to eat Sasori-san’s food, you can make your own. I am sure he’d understand.”

Sasori grunted, a sound that mostly just indicated he didn’t want to be there.

Sakura ate her soup quietly, determined to get as much of it inside her as possible before hell somehow broke loose across the table.

“Okay,” she said when her bowl was empty. “Was there anything else?”

“ _No_ ,” said Sasori emphatically. He, too, had just finished. He stood and held out one hand.

She looked at it. “...What?”

He rolled his eyes, leaned forward and snagged her bowl away.

“I was going to wash that,” she protested.

He made a derisive noise that she did not quite understand and shoved their crockery in the sink with a clatter.

Sakura glanced toward Deidara, who licked a bit of stray soup off his lower lip and shrugged.

“Okay,” she sighed, leveraging herself awkwardly to her feet, “I, and my giant text book,” she eyed it with a resigned look before picking it up, “are going to bed.”

“Wait,” said Konan, digging through her bag. “Here,” she held out something rectangular and wrapped rather securely in black leather.

“Wha... oh,” said Sakura, plucking it from her hand. It was a phone - it just appeared to be housed in some kind of industrial-strength cover. It was heavy in her hand. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s better if we can contact you,” said Konan, fishing out a phone charger and handing that over too. “The bills are registered to your email account,” she added.

Sakura nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

“You say it like it’s not in her interest,” snorted Hidan.

Konan’s eyes flicked to him for less than a second, but otherwise she ignored him. “You’re quite welcome, although I admit it came from central funds.”

“Ne, ne,” Tobi appeared suddenly at Sakura’s side, towering over her. She jumped a little, but she managed not to yelp, scream or fall over. She still had _no idea_ how Tobi seemed capable of popping out of nowhere. “Can Tobi see your room, Sakura-chan?”

She blinked. “My... room? Ahh...” What the hell, she thought, everybody else had, since apparently climbing through her bedroom window was the trendiest way to enter the house. “Sure, I guess?”

He clapped his hands excitedly. “Come on, Sakura-chan!” he crowed, propelling her toward the stairs with his hands on her shoulder.

“Um,” she said to Konan, over her shoulder, “thank you! Ow, stop it! Tobi-san!” She stumbled and hobbled for a second, which was apparently precisely the moment he was waiting for because Tobi once again picked her up. He did it by hooking his hands under her arms and lifting her off the ground like she weighed about as much as a kitten.

“ _Tobi-san!_ ”

The last thing Sakura saw as she was carried away was Kisame rolling his eyes and restraining Deidara from following with one huge hand.

Tobi had no trouble carrying an extra fifty or so kilograms up the stairs, which meant that he was at least physically stronger than Hidan - none of her other housemates had ever tried to drag her around like a ragdoll before, so she didn’t have much else for comparison. After the first flight of stairs she heaved a put-upon sigh and allowed herself to go limp in his grip.

“This is degrading,” she told him, watching the floor move under her.

“Ehhh? Ah, Tobi doesn’t mean to upset Sakura-chan! It’s just... Sakura-chan is _slow_ ,” he finished plaintively.

“I sprained my ankle, Tobi-san,” she reminded him.

“Right,” he agreed. “Tobi won’t pick you up so much when you’re faster!” he decided cheerfully.

Hopefully, Sakura thought, when she was faster again she could _get away_.

She didn’t really understand why Tobi wanted to see her bedroom until they got there - some childish desire, she supposed initially - but then he put her down and strode straight to her balcony with its broken door and stepped out and looked around.

Sakura balanced herself carefully. “Tobi-san, if this is about Kakashi-sensei, I don’t think he’s coming back,” she said carefully.

He laughed brightly and beamed over his shoulder at her. “Tobi just wants to make sure Sakura-chan is safe!” he informed her in a cheery voice.

Sakura eyed him, but made the decision to let it go. There was evidently more to Tobi than she’d initially suspected - which, in hindsight, made sense. The group of people he hung around with weren’t the sort of people who made friends with a grown man who had the brain capacity of an eight year old, surely.

Either he had some kind of mental disorder that was markedly different to what Sakura had initially assumed, or he was a very good actor. She watched him lean over the balcony’s railing with his butt in the air for a few moments, making strange noises of investigation.

He’d have to be a _very_ good actor to keep this nonsense up.

“Ne, Tobi-san...” she said slowly, frowning, “how old are you?”

“Eh?” he contorted himself to look back at her. “Tobi is --Ack!”

Sakura let out a completely involuntary shriek as he went tumbling over the edge. “Tobi-san!” She started forward and swore when her ankle reminded her it was sprained.

“It’s okay, Sakura-chan,” came Tobi’s voice from somewhere over the edge of the balcony. “Tobi is okay!”

She pressed a hand to her chest as though it would help her slow down her racing heart.

Tobi pulled himself up over the railing and flopped on the balcony floor. He sighed noisily. “Safe,” he announced in a tone of relief.

Sakura sighed and went to perch on her bed. Maybe she didn’t want people hauling her around like a favourite stuffed animal, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in pain. Her ankle did better when she wasn’t putting any pressure on it. “You’re an idiot,” she informed him.

“Ouch,” he said. “So mean. Besides,” he added, rolling his head to look at her, “Tobi wasn’t the one who jumped out of a moving car, ne? Your balcony is nice, Sakura-chan. You can see the stars from up here.”

Sakura blinked. “I... hadn’t looked,” she admitted. “You were going to tell me how old you were, anyway.”

He blew out a sigh, letting his cheeks puff up. “Tobi is thirty one, Sakura-chan.”

“ _Ehh_?” She was sure they could probably hear her exclamation all the way downstairs. “No way.” If she’d been asked, she’d have guessed maybe _twenty_ one. “You can’t possibly be that old.”

He sat up just to pout at her. “Tobi’s not lying. It’s all genetic, anyway,” he added. “Maa...” his grin returned suddenly, slightly mischievous around the edges, “Sakura-chan should ask Madara-sama how old _he_ is.”

“Madara-san..?” Sakura frowned. “He can’t be more than...” she opened her mouth to say ‘thirty’ but then she looked at Tobi.

If _he_ was thirty...

She didn’t want to know.

She let Tobi finish inspecting her balcony for ease of access - for totally un-Kakashi-related reasons, she was sure. She firmly declined to let him plait her hair, no, not even - maybe _especially not_ \- if he put ribbons in it, and gestured him rather pointedly out the door, which she closed and locked after him.

Then she pulled out the phone Konan had given her.

It didn’t have any numbers in it, but she punched in the numbers for Naruto and Ino by rote. She couldn’t remember Mebuki’s number in the USA, much to her chagrin, so she resolved to email her mother and ask for it - although she’d probably leave out the part of the story with the sprained ankle and broken fingers.

<To: PIG; Naruto  
<Timestamp: 8:57 PM  
<Message body: Old phone had an accident. New phone here. Spread the word! - Sakura >

<From: Naruto  
<Timestamp: 8:57 PM  
<Message body: WHOOO, SAKURA-CHAN! I’M ON IT.>

That meant that for the next several minutes Sakura’s phone buzzed near-constantly as the people to whom Naruto gave Sakura’s number continued to spread it to each other.

<From: PIG  
<Timestamp: 8:58 PM  
<Message body: I WAS STARTING TO THINK YOU WERE DEAD, FOREHEAD. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?>

<To: PIG  
<Timestamp: 8:58 PM  
<Message body: An accident, Pig, can’t you read?>

<From: PIG   
<Timestamp: 8:59 PM  
<Message body: Whatever. I’ve saved the number.>

<From: Unknown  
<Timestamp: 9:01 PM  
<Message body: Hello, Sakura-san. It’s Hyuuga Hinata. I’m sorry to hear you lost your phone. This is my phone number. I have attached contact details for others of our graduating cohort you may need. <Contact: Aburame Shino> <Contact: Inuzuka Kiba> <Contact: Tenten>>

Sakura only peripherally knew Hinata, but Naruto was friends with her - and she did seem to know everybody, even if nobody ever really seemed to know _her_. Sakura sent some rapid-fire texts in the next few minutes. She didn’t think she’d had numbers for Inuzuka or Aburame before, but she’d been friendly with them before moving and they weren’t bad guys.

<From: Inuzuka Kiba  
<Timestamp: 9:12 PM  
<Message body: <inukibamaru.jpg> we totally need this as our contact pic ok>

Sakura blinked at the picture he’d sent. Somebody with some surprisingly advanced image editing skills had blended his grinning face with his dog’s, so he appeared to have fluffy ears and a dark nose. His teeth, too, seemed really sharp. She snorted a laugh and saved it as the contact image for Kiba. Sure. Whatever.

<From: Aburame Shino  
<Timestamp: 9:14 PM  
<Message body: lol, Sakura, he’d never text you back on his own. I've saved him your number. - Kiba.>

<From: Aburame Shino  
<Timestamp: 9:22 PM  
<Message body: He is incorrect, Sakura-san. It would be impolite to ignore such a message. It is good to hear you are well. I have saved your number under a more appropriate moniker.>

Sakura smiled a little. Yeah, she should have gotten numbers from these guys when she’d left school.

<From: Unknown  
<Timestamp: 10:03 PM  
<Message body: Sakura? - Sasuke.>

Sakura’s fingertips hovered over the buttons for a few long moments, but she decided against asking Sasuke for Itachi’s number. One of her housemates would have it, and she definitely didn’t need to have that conversation with Sasuke.

<To: Sasuke  
<Timestamp: 10:04 PM  
<Message body: Definitely Sakura. Save this number.>

He didn’t respond, but Sakura trusted he’d done it. Sasuke was a weird one, sometimes.

 

* * *

 

The next few weeks settled, slowly and awkwardly, back into a normal sort of feeling. Sakura couldn’t quite lay to rest the feeling that something was on the precipice of blowing up and turning her life into utter chaos again, but mostly it didn’t. About four weeks after the incident in which she hurled herself from Sai’s car, Sakura’s fingers were tender but more or less healed. Her ankle recovered much more slowly.

“I had no idea this would take so long to heal,” she confessed to Tenten, who occasionally dropped around after her morning jog.

Sakura joined in with some of the post-running stretches Tenten did - the ones that didn’t put any pressure on her ankle. She’d found that since she’d taken it up, not doing extra exercise left her restless and feeling like she was going to crawl out of her skin.

“Ankle injuries,” Tenten said sympathetically, stretching her legs out in front of her and wrapping her hands over her toes. “Remember when I said Neji broke his ankle one time? It took him like six months before he could do anything with it.”

“That sounds ...really boring.” Sakura scrunched up her nose.

“He was absolutely insufferable,” Tenten agreed cheerfully. “He made Lee cry like once a day. I mean... not that it’s hard to make Lee cry, but... every day, you know? Dedicated.”

Sakura snorted with laughter. Usually when she saw Neji, he was being more or less nice to her - which was to say, he treated her with the same bottomless indifference he treated most things. She’d only rarely seen him annoyed with anything, but... yeah, she could imagine that. “Poor Lee-san,” she said, pressing her lips together to avoid widening her smile.

“Poor _me_ ,” Tenten corrected her.

Sakura used the lull in absolute chaos to catch up on her school work, which had suffered a little in the interim. She studied very hard, not least because she was sure something would disrupt her life again sooner or later and she was going to need a buffer of good marks to prevent actually failing.

Almost every time she left the house, Sakura found herself accompanied by one of her housemates as a precaution.

Sasori was mercurial and impatient, and as far as Sakura could tell he didn’t actually like her very much. Or, actually, anybody else, for that matter. He would never mention it, but Sakura was absolutely certain that he found her to be a complete waste of her time.

Sakura _liked_ Deidara. He liked her. They got on well together. But if she had to get into a car with him one more time she thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown.

“Mou, Sakura-hime,” Deidara said in his best plaintive voice. Since his discovery of Itachi’s total lack of honorific against her name, Deidara had dedicated himself to calling her any of the many things she’d said he could call her several weeks ago. Initially Sakura had considered this a stupid passive-aggressive trend in their relationship, but lately she was starting to wonder if he wasn’t just having fun at her expense.

“What is the point of you following me around so I don’t get murdered by black ops,” she asked, “if you’re just going to kill both of us with your driving?”

“Hmm,” said Deidara thoughtfully, brushing a spill of golden hair out of his eyes. He had the car keys in his hand and she was desperately trying to convince him that they could take the bus. So far he’d managed to manipulate, cajole, propel and otherwise persuade Sakura into the entryway with her bag, but she was prepared to stand firm. “Well, I guess at least then they wouldn’t have killed us, yeah?”

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE,” she yelled, smacking him on the shoulder.

“Ow.” He poked her in the solar plexus with two fingers in retaliation. “We’re _all_ gonna die, sensei,” he pointed out, “so you may as well get used to the idea.”

“Do we have to die _today?_ ”

“Depends on the traffic, yeah,” Deidara grinned.

“I don’t --”

There was a thunderous pounding on the door.

Both of them paused.

Deidara reached out and pulled it open. “Yeah?”

For a second, Sakura thought she was hallucinating.

Yamanaka Ino rested her fists on the swell of her hips. She peered around Deidara. “Yo, Sakura,” she said with her glossy lips curved into a smile. There was something just a little frosty about it. “Surprise.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” said Sakura, but she was grinning stupidly. “ _Pig_!” She zoomed toward her as fast as her stupid injured leg would take her.

“Pig?” Deidara repeated uncertainly.

“Pig, Deidara-kun; Deidara-kun, Ino-pig,” said Sakura all in a rush. She more or less just fell into Ino’s person and wound her arms around her like some kind of demented sea creature.

Ino waved at Deidara over her shoulder. “You have fabulous hair,” she informed him gravely.

He ran his hand through it as though he’d just remembered. “Nice to see that _some_ of Sakura-hime’s friends have good taste, yeah,” he smiled back at her.

Sakura ignored him. “Innnooooo,” she crowed into her hair, which smelled like comfort and home and childhood and all the good things. “Oh my god, what are you doing here, it’s like a four hour train ride from Suna, seriously, what --?”

“Are you serious, forehead girl? You moved in with a bunch of guys I don’t know anything about, your campus got _blown up_ , you keep sending me texts at stupid o’clock in the morning about how you’ve lost control of your life, you stopped talking to me and lost your phone and then I had to find out from Kiba that you got _hit by a car_? Look at you!”

“Wait,” Sakura interrupted, “why does Kiba-san know?”

“That’s what you ask? WHY DIDN’T I KNOW?” Ino yelled at her, shoving her with one hand on her shoulder.

Sakura stumbled backward on her bad ankle, fetching up against another person. It wasn’t Deidara. It was too tall to be Deidara.

Sakura looked up. “Oh,” she said.

Kakuzu raised one eyebrow. “You’re in the way,” he pointed out.

Sakura rolled her eyes and moved sideways. He settled his bag over one shoulder and wove around Ino to descend from the verandah down to the path through their overgrown front garden.

“ _Rude_ ,” said Ino, glowering at him. She clicked her tongue.

Kakuzu paused. He turned. He eyed her.

She lifted her chin and delivered him a sharp, pugnacious smile. “Yamanaka Ino,” she said, meeting his gaze and shoving one hand forward.

He stared at her for a long moment. “Kakuzu,” he said finally, and took her hand. It was a firm handshake, but not a competition as to who could squeeze harder. Sakura breathed an internal sigh of relief that Kakuzu was slightly more mature than her other housemates.

Then he turned around and kept walking.

“Che,” muttered Ino, glaring at his back. “Friendly.”

Sakura tilted her head. “Actually,” she said slowly, “I think you get used to it?” She looked around to check with Deidara.

He gave her raised eyebrows. “Maaa, Sakura-sensei, I’m pretty sure that _was_ Kakuzu being friendly.”

How helpful. She pulled a face at him and turned back to Ino. “Do you want to come in?”

“Into your den of iniquity and filth?” Ino scrunched up her nose. “Not even a little bit,” she admitted cheerfully. “I’m here to kidnap you.”

“I have c--”

“-classes you’re gonna ditch,” Ino said, nodding sagely. “I know.”

“Ino,” Sakura sighed.

“No, forehead girl, I didn’t drive all the way down here from Kaze-Capital so you could explain how a day of classes is more important than I am.”

“They’re not more important than you are, of course they’re not, but I have to keep up with my studies, andmmmphhh,” she finished, glaring at Ino over the hand covering her mouth.

At this point, Deidara snorted softly, jammed his keys back in his pocket, and messed up Sakura’s hair something fierce before disappearing back into the house. “Good luck with that, yeah,” he said carelessly.

“Nope,” said Ino. “See? Even your housemate with the awesome hair knows you have no say in this. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Forward march, we’re going shopping.”

“Shopping? Ino--”

Sakura stopped when a conversation reached them.

“Ow! Why the hell is there a hobo sleeping outside?”

There was the sound of a laborious sigh. “Don’t you look where you’re going?”

“Is that Shikamaru?” Sakura peeled the hand from her mouth and peered around Ino. It was hard to tell, but there did appear to be a lean silhouette flopped out in the overgrown grass.

Ino shrugged. “My arms hurt if I drive for too many hours straight,” she admitted. She pouted at Sakura’s expression. “What? He wasn’t doing anything useful anyway.”

As far as Sakura could see he still wasn’t doing anything useful, but since that was basically a constant state for Shikamaru it didn’t seem to make much difference. What bothered Sakura was that Hidan had apparently tripped over him, and now he was cranky.

(Crankier. Possessed of greater... crank.)

“What the hell are you doing lying down in the dirt?” Hidan demanded.

“Lying down in the dirt,” Shikamaru pointed out.

“Well fucking _stop it_ , you’re in the way!” Hidan snarled, kicking him in the ribs. “What the hell are you even doing here? You sure as hell don’t live here. Get the hell out before I kick your fucking arse!”

“...He was cute for about thirty seconds,” Ino admitted, tucking her hair behind one ear. “Is he the psychopath?”

Sakura blew out a huge breath. “Define psychopath,” she muttered. “Hidan-san,” she called out, prompting him to look up instead of booting Shikamaru in the ribs again.

“Oh, Sakura,” he said. His gaze hit Ino, dropped to her thighs, and then rose to her face again. “Your other friend’s hotter,” he said without preamble.

“Wow, I _so_ need advice on being attractive from _you_ ,” Ino sneered, crossing her arms over her breasts. “You smell like a slaughterhouse threw up on you, and you’re rude to boot. What the hell are you doing living with these freaks?” she asked Sakura, tossing her hair.

Hidan shot her what might be loosely called a smile. “She looks like Deidara in drag,” he said, licking his teeth.

That would have been less funny if it happened to be less true, but now that he’d said it, Sakura could not unsee it. It took a lot of willpower not to laugh. Instead she heaved a sigh. “You know what,” she said. “Let’s just go. You can go shopping, and I’ll watch you buy things that make you happy while lamenting how ridiculously poor I am,” she decided.

“That is the plan,” said Ino shamelessly. She strode ahead, descending the verandah stairs and a trot. She passed Hidan much too close for Sakura’s liking, but then Ino probably didn’t know how little provocation he needed to start a fight.

“You have some fucked up friends,” Hidan said, eyeing her suspiciously as she prodded Shikamaru from his ongoing slump in the grass.

Sakura turned an incredulous look on him. He didn’t seem to notice. “Fucking heathens,” he muttered, and stalked into the house.

 

* * *

 

The next several hours were exhausting, but ultimately satisfying. Sakura completely vetoed discussion about her housemates, and Ino reluctantly complied. When they arrived at the parking lot of some oddly specific shopping complex, Sakura and Ino left Shikamaru snoozing in the car.

“Eh,” Ino said, tugging gently at his pony tail. He smacked half-heartedly at her hand. “He’ll stop me from getting a ticket.”

Sakura doubted he’d even wake up if Ino was getting a ticket, but she didn’t voice this concern. It would only start an argument. Shikamaru cracked one eye open and wiggled his fingers lazily at her as they headed for the shopping complex.

“Why this complex?” Sakura wondered.

“I looked it up.” Ino held up three fingers. “Direct. Factory. Outlet.”

“Oh,” said Sakura. Oh, dear.

 

* * *

 

“Oooh, no, stop, I need -”

“Oh my god, I make you come shopping and you want work out gear and _pyjamas_? Forehead girl you are the most boring human being alive, what even.”

“Ugh, no, my pyjamas got all stained, it’s gross, I need new ones!”

“Eww, were you eating in bed?”

“...nooooo.”

“Liar. Gross. You’re disgusting. And you call _me_ a pig.”

“I still need new pyjamas.”

“Fiiine.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh...”

“You know you can’t afford them.”

“But I want them... I bet that leather is _soft_...”

“You’re gonna bankrupt yourself. You won’t even be able to get back to Kaze-Capital.”

“But I _want_ them. Look at those _heels_ , ohhh. Mmmmnng. Hmmmng.”

“Inoichi-san will murder you.”

“Not if he doesn’t find out...”

“I will tell him about that one time -”

“- No!”

“I would.”

“Traitor!”

“It’s for your own good.”

“...Is my soul legal tender?”

_“Keep moving, Pig.”_

 

* * *

 

“...I also really needed the work out stuff, you know. I was wearing my favourite pants when I did my ankle, it’s all... ripped and torn and stuff... And what am I going to work out in, otherwise?”

“Your life includes more working out than partying. Have you noticed that? This is possibly the saddest discussion I’ve had this year. Your life is a sartorial tragedy.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh! Lingerie sale!”

“What, forehead, no!”

“But they’re cheap!”

“You only buy fancy underpants if you want somebody to _see_ them.”

“Yeah - I’ll see them!”

“You and who else?"

“Who cares! Oooh, look at that, with the purple dots, isn’t that --”

“I’VE MET THE GUYS YOU LIVE WITH. NO.”

“Let go. Let - ugh, Ino! I’m not buying underwear for _the guys I live with_ , I’m buying underwear to _cover my butt_. It’s super cute! Come - _ow_! - on!”

“Sakurraaaaa...”

 

* * *

 

Sakura made it home at about seven o’clock, wild-haired and bright-eyed, clutching an enormous pile of bags.

“Hi,” she said to Sasori, who was forced to come and answer the door when she couldn’t dig her keys out without dropping all her things.

His eyes flicked to Ino. “Is she staying here?”

“Nope,” Sakura said cheerfully. “Are you going to be in town tomorrow, or...?”

Ino shook her head. “I’ve got classes to get to. There _is_ an attendance requirement. We’re going to drive back up tonight.”

She swept her up in a hug that made Sakura’s bones creak and then waggled her fingers good bye. “We’re going to do this again in a few weeks, forehead girl,” she said severely, then flicked her in the forehead and turned away from the door.

“Right,” muttered Sakura. She waved over Ino’s retreating shoulder. “See you, Shikamaru-kun!”

He lifted a hand in response from where he was sitting in the driver’s seat, too lazy to get out and walk her to the door.

Sasori watched the whole exchange with blank, cool eyes, and then stepped back so Sakura could push past him in a storm of paper bags and rustling plastic. “Thanks,” she said.

He made a vague noise of acknowledgement and disappeared back into the house.

 

* * *

 

The appearance of Ino was a bright, slightly frightening spot in an otherwise settled month. She did end up going to Kakashi’s house to meet with him for her scheduled lesson during this time - _without_ an escort, which was a very hard won argument - despite her injury, but what actually happened was that she spent an hour petting one of his adorable dogs through the security gate and then she got up and left. She was powerfully tempted to add to the graffiti on his fence, but restrained herself with effort.

Since he had obviously declined to show up, she stopped by the Nekketsu Dojo. It was so close, anyway - it seemed a pity not to say hello.

Lee was out running a half marathon because he’d promised he would if he didn’t manage a thousand push-ups in an hour. Gai-sensei seemed to be extremely proud of this madness so Sakura resolved not to question it - even though she was fairly certain it was unhealthy to do that much exercise.

Gai-sensei, for all his youth and enthusiasm and general craziness, was actually significantly quieter than Lee for the most part. He had moments of thoughtfulness that suggested to Sakura that time and age had tempered him a little.

If nothing else, they were very polite at the dojo. Neji set the kettle to boiling for tea while Gai-sensei and Tenten settled at the table with her. “I didn’t really mean to interrupt,” she hedged uncertainly.

“Not all interruptions are unpleasant,” said Gai-sensei, flashing her a glinting smile.

She spent a surprisingly pleasant half-hour there, and managed to casually explain what she was doing in the area - that Kakashi had asked her to come, stood her up, and taught her nothing - and she was pleased to see the fire smouldering in Gai-sensei’s eyes when she finally left.

“That,” said Tenten, walking her to the bus stop, “was cruel.”

“He deserves it,” Sakura said with a sniff.

“Sakura-san,” Tenten’s voice was so serious that Sakura blinked.

“Yes..?”

“Gai-sensei is my honoured and respected teacher,” she said in a surprisingly hard voice. “He’s an idiot, but... He isn’t an object of ridicule.”

“Oh,” said Sakura, realising what she’d meant. “Oh, you mean it’s cruel to _him_ ,” she said finally. “I-”

She paused.

She had kind of used him like that when she’d set them on Hidan. And now, she was fairly certain that she’d just done something very similar to Kakashi.

“You can’t just use their weirdness as a way of punishing other people,” Tenten said after a few moments. “It’s humiliating and disrespectful. Gai-sensei and Lee really like you,” she added, brow furrowing.

Guilt washed over Sakura. A hundred swift defences raced through her mind, everything from ‘god, it’s just a joke’ to ‘but they’re so _weird_ ,’ and she shut her teeth before they came out.

Since it was obviously upsetting Tenten, it was clearly more serious than ‘just a joke,’ after all. “Un,” Sakura said after a few moments of thought. “I hadn’t really thought of how it might be really...” she trailed off thoughtfully. “Mean, I guess,” she said, unable to find a better word.

Tenten, bless her, didn’t say anything. She just waited for Sakura to finish thinking.

Sakura hated apologising, less because the words ‘I’m sorry’ were so hard and more because they were indicative of her being wrong, and --

Well, Sakura didn’t like being wrong. Or losing. Or feeling bad about herself. These were things she loathed with a powerful resentment.

On the other hand, sometimes it was important to suck it up.

“I’m sorry,” she said after an awkward few seconds of silence.

There was a tense second, and then everything relaxed. 

The corner of Tenten’s lips curled wryly. “Don’t worry about it _too_ much. I’m sure Gai-sensei would have found a reason to bother Kakashi-san anyway. But... you should know, you know?”

“Un,” Sakura nodded. She resolved to _not_ use the nice (but weird) people of the Nekketsu Dojo as her personal shock troops of youth and weirdness. ...At least not without their informed consent, she amended internally.

Tenten clapped her on the shoulder as the bus pulled up. “Stay safe,” she told her, eyes trailing to her still-bandaged ankle. "Don't leap into traffic."

“I’ll do my best,” Sakura said, a little drily, before getting aboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments? Questions? You can post them here, where I will sob rainbows into my pillows because you said a thing to me and it's almost like having social contact, or come find me at **[** **[tozettewrites.tumblr.com](http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com)]**


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Orochimaru is an asshole, Sakura is asked out and Deidara and Hidan are silly.

Sakura did, eventually, meet Orochimaru. It wasn’t for weeks, though - not until after she had aced her mid-semester tests and found herself back at work.

It felt good to be back at TRIVIA, even if her ankle was still giving her a little hesitation when she walked on it.

While she was still paying for her shopping trip - putting off nagging necessary-but-not-time-sensitive purchases, eyeing some of the more expensive foods at the supermarket covetously while she loaded herself up with instant noodles, _not_ purchasing Icha Icha Violence, cancelling a dental appointment - she had managed to pay her rent and bills and splurge on a trip to a physiotherapist.

‘Managing’ had involved walking into the kitchen while Kakuzu was glowering at his laptop screen with a cup of tea in one hand.

“Um,” she’d said carefully, “do you have any tips for planning a budget?”

The look he turned on her would have turned a lesser woman to stone. “If you can’t make your rent -” he growled.

“ _No_!” she waved one arm frantically - _anything_ to make him stop looking at her like that, and now she was thinking about poor Gekkou-san, that missing person, and - “No, not that! I’m, we’re fine, it’s fine. Rent is good. Rent is fine. I just... might need to see a physiotherapist, and...” She trailed off, sagging with relief when the tension went out of him.

Kakuzu grunted. “Sit.” He pointed at a seat at the table.

She sat. Gingerly.

What followed had been one of the most terrifying hours of her life. She left feeling kind of... singed.

But with the help of Kakuzu’s frankly terrifying attention to detail and overwhelming scorn, she’d gotten there, and the physiotherapy sessions had definitely helped her get back on her feet.

Almost as soon as she’d been more or less competent to walk properly, Sakura texted Konan.

<To: Konan  
Timestamp: 9:23 AM  
Message body: I’m walking and my hands work fine. Can I come back?>

It took her less than a minute to receive a response.

<From: Konan  
Timestamp: 9:24 AM  
Message body: You can open tomorrow morning. >

And so Sakura found herself moving through the familiar motions of opening the shop with Pein. Aside from simply having something productive to do, working at TRIVIA also supplied Sakura with free coffee, which she had definitely missed.

“You’re turning me into a coffee snob,” she complained, taking her cup from Pein and inhaling its contents greedily.

Pein shook his head and moved onto the next customer, who was actually a paying one.

The morning was a busy one, even though it was raining outside. A number of people, Sakura suspected, had come into TRIVIA because of the rain - it was sudden and heavy, and there was a pile of umbrellas leaning against one wall. She hoped none of the origami got too wet - Konan wouldn’t be pleased.

Despite deliveries, they ran out of full-fat milk and Pein had to dash to a nearby convenience store for more.

“Oh,” Sakura said, feeling a little queasy at telling yet another customer that she couldn’t get him a coffee just yet because they’d run out of milk, “I’m sorry, we’ve run out of milk. Pein-san has just gone to --”

She shut her mouth with a click when the man rolled his eyes, heaved a giant, put-upon sigh and said, “Well that was a giant waste of my time, wasn’t it?”

Sakura ground her teeth. Several sharp responses came to mind, starting with ‘do you think I’d be having this stupid conversation if I could help it?’ and finishing with ‘yes, being an asshole is a giant waste of your time’, but she swallowed them down with effort. That was, unfortunately, just one of the downsides of talking to customers. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she said instead, and if her voice was a little flatter than usual, well...

...Well, it wasn’t like her boss would have cared. Jiraiya would have told the man to get fucked himself. That thought was strangely comforting.

The man sniffed, and then he turned around and stalked out. “Don’t bother,” he said to another person coming through the doorway, “they don’t actually have any coffee.”

The man coming in paused in the doorway, watching the rude customer as he retreated. He was hooded against the rain in a dark, waterproof coat.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura said to the new customer, switching her smile on brightly, “our barista has just had to leave for a few minutes to get more milk. If there was anything else you wanted...?”

The man heaved a sigh, more exasperated than annoyed. He drew down his hood and pulled off his slick coat, dumping it over somebody else’s umbrella in the corner. Dark hair spilled free, hitting him at the ribs and falling loose around his face.

“I see that idiot runs his business much as he runs the rest of his life,” he drawled. “What kind of cafe runs out of _milk_?”

The nerve! Sakura clenched her fists. She was _so_ done. “A very good one,” she said tightly, “since clearly _customers bought all ours._ ”

He paused in his movements, a sudden bizarre, lacertilian stillness. A heartbeat later he turned to look at her. “Ah,” he said softly. “You must be Sakura-kun.”

She blinked, and then took a proper look at him. He was tall - taller than Hidan, shorter than Kakuzu, she thought, and pale-skinned, with a hard and angular face that she wasn’t entirely sure she liked. He had strange eyes, though admittedly not as strange as Pein’s: yellow, bright and striking.

“I am,” she agreed.

He looked at her, eyes drifting from her shoes to her ears. He didn’t look terribly impressed, but he nodded all the same.

She sucked on her teeth. “Can I get you something?” she asked politely. If he didn’t answer her, she was more than happy to move onto another customer.

There was a short silence.

After a moment’s stillness he finally answered. “I take my coffee black,” he said. “Tell me when that idiot gets in.”

“Sure,” she muttered, although he’d already disappeared to find himself a spare table - the one in the back, back to the corner, with a clear view of the doors and windows. Yeah, he probably was a member of the Akatsuki.

So that was Orochimaru, she thought, tamping the grounds roughly to make his coffee. Did the man have _no_ social skills? Marching around like he owned the place, snapping at other people’s employees, randomly deciding to call people ‘idiots’... Her first impression of Orochimaru was that he was kind of an asshole.

And what kind of grown man wore eyeliner and eyeshadow? With, she glanced at him again, a _suit_? It wasn’t like Madara’s flashy, old-school-gentleman-magician costume - this was a sharply tailored, charcoal suit that was probably worth more than Sakura’s entire person. Great, so he was probably a _rich_ asshole.

She delivered his coffee with a tight smile. He looked up at her from beneath his eyelashes, which were either false or some kind of supremely unfair expression of genetics, because they were thick and dark and long.

He would have been pretty, if he wasn’t too _weird looking_ , and, you know, _offensive_ , and probably _old_ , to be pretty. “Is ‘idiot’ Jiraiya-san, or Pein-san?” she asked him, as politely as possible. Nobody would call Konan ‘the idiot,’ surely.

His eyes flicked to the door and back to her. “Jiraiya,” he answered.

That she was even slightly offended by that was evidence of how little she liked the man, because Jiraiya _was_ an idiot most of the time.

“I see,” she said, and then turned and headed back for the waiting customers.

Konan came in carrying a box of milk bottles within the next five minutes, and Pein arrived on her heels. “You seem frustrated,” Konan said, examining the crowd.

Sakura tilted her head toward the back table.

Konan looked over. Then she sighed softly. “I’ll get his cup,” she offered, and Sakura shot her a pathetically grateful look.

Konan seemed more or less content to take care of Orochimaru’s table, so Sakura got to pretend he didn’t exist for the rest of her shift, which returned to being basically pleasant. It was about a half-hour before she had to leave that Yamato came in.

She waved, distracted with the preparation of a grilled goats cheese and strawberry sandwich, and was a little surprised when she returned from dropping it off at a table to find him still waiting next to the service bench. He ran a hand through his hair - impatient, or nervous, or some feeling she couldn’t quite read.

“Something to take away?” she asked brightly, sliding around the counter.

“Not really,” he said. He smiled awkwardly. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Me?” she blinked. Then she rocked back on her heels, shooting a sideways look at Pein. He blinked, looked away, and busied himself with a coffee. “Sure, what’s up?”

He cleared his throat.“Do you, uh,” he ducked his head, giving her shoes a faintly mortified look, “do you want to maybe go get dinner and a movie or something tomorrow?”

Sakura blinked. “Yamato-sempai,” she said slowly, “are you asking me out?”

Pein might not have been looking at her anymore, but from the too-sharp clatter of a saucer she was certain he was listening.

Yamato rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “Um... yes?”

Sakura contemplated for a second. She liked Yamato, even if she didn’t feel a visceral attraction to him the way she did with Itachi, or... But he was very sweet, and she thought perhaps she _could_ be attracted to him. “Sure,” she agreed cheerfully. “I’d like - oh, wait,” she waved her arms, prompting his burgeoning smile to slide off his face. “Is it okay to date a teacher?”

There was a pause.

Yamato slapped one hand over his eyes. “I’m not actually your teacher,” he told her from behind his hand.

“Uh,” said Sakura. Well, he wasn’t, but he kind of _was_ , in that he did all the teacher-work, and surely the rule existed for a reason? Except... it did sound like fun. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “Sure, did you have any idea what you wanted to see?”

“I thought maybe you could pick the movie, and I could pick where we ate?” he suggested hesitantly.

Sakura grinned. “Sure. I’ll text you this evening?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” His smile _was_ kind of sweet. Her phone was still in her bag out the back, but she accepted his, punched in her number, and sent herself a text.

Yamato ducked his head and smiled. Then, “Okay, I have to get to class,” he admitted, snatching up his bag and glancing worriedly at the clock.

“See you,” Sakura said, waving cheerfully after him.

She paused after he’d left, feeling pleased and flattered and kind of excited.

“Sakura-san,” Pein said serenely somewhere behind her. She felt a guilty flush, because, oh god, she was _at work_ , that was totally not professional. What must they -- “Don’t let Owner-san find out.”

She paused. “Jiraiya-san...” her face went white. She could just imagine.

“Exactly,” Pein said, decorating a latte with a fern leaf made of foam.

Sakura ran into Jiraiya on the way out the door, but all she mentioned to him was that his friend was waiting. Then she fled, lest she somehow give herself away.

 

* * *

 

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:02 PM  
Message body: I HAVE A DATE.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:33 PM  
Message body: IT’S NOT THAT GUY WITH THE SCARS IS IT?>

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 1:35 PM  
Message body: It’s not any of my housemates. It’s a guy from uni, Tenzou Yamato. He’s a postgrad studying medical ethics.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:14 PM  
Message body: Weird eyes, but he’s BUILT. I give him a 6/10.>

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:15 PM  
Message body: HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT? Also he's v sweet, 6.5 at least.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:17 PM  
Message body: The Senjuu website has him in their staff directory. His FB is locked down but one of his friends has lower security settings and heaps of photos.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:18 PM  
Message body: I just found a person who knows a person who found his passport application by accident. He’s 10 years older than you! What are you even doing?>

Sakura looked, bemused, at her phone for a few long moments. Sometimes Ino’s dedication to keeping abreast of gossip was _terrifying_. She decided to misinterpret her question.

<To: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:20 PM  
Message body: dinner and a movie, as it happens>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:21 PM  
Message body: Fffffft boring.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:21 PM  
Message body: Still a classic first date though I guess.>

<From: PIG  
Timestamp: 2:22 PM  
Message body: If he turns out to be as boring as he looks you can just talk about the movie.>

Sakura rolled her eyes, shoved her phone away and went back to examining the offerings at the local cinema. In a fit of nostalgia, she’d actually gotten the newspaper instead of looking it up online. There was something satisfying about marking the films off with her red pen, anyway.

Her eyes skimmed over a a romantic comedy that promised scenes of some bumbling male protagonist climbing some poor girl’s drainpipe with a bouquet clamped between his teeth and a boom box playing sappy ballads, which was frankly exhausting to even contemplate. She put a big red strike through it and moved on.

There was also a fantasy film based on a popular novel featuring a group of intrepid adventurers on an epic quest to save their homeland which didn’t really thrill her and a reboot of a classic sci-fi film that appeared to be mostly lens flares, which she circled as a ‘maybe’.

Briefly promising was an action flick that seemed to be about really built men walking away from explosions, but she quickly realised that if she saw that it would simply have to be with Deidara, since it featured both of their primary interests: explosions for him, attractive dirt-smeared men for her. She scribbled down the name of that one for later.

Her eyes paused over an ad for the Icha Icha movie, which... God, how she wanted to see that film. It was almost shameful.

“Move,” Sasori said from right behind her.

Sakura hadn’t heard him come in. She flinched. He clicked his tongue impatiently. She moved sideways so he could reach past her for a cup that had been left on the table. Today Sasori was wearing an enormously oversize sweater and the pale tips of his fingers just barely peeked out from the cuffs.

He retreated with his cup to boil water for his hideous instant coffee.

Sakura taped her pen on the paper. “Hey,” she said, turning in her seat.

Sasori grunted an acknowledgement.

“Do you think it’d be inappropriate to see the Icha Icha movie on a first date?" Because she was seriously thinking about it, she really was.

Sasori turned his gaze from his cup to her. His eyelids were half-mast, giving him the wholly inaccurate appearance of a kind of lazy sleepiness. “Icha Icha?” he repeated, blinking once, slowly.

“The movie,” she held up the paper, pointing at the ad.

“It looks pornographic.”

“It’s not...” Sakura paused. Well, it kind of was, really. In a soft core kind of way.

Sasori stared at her for a long moment. “I don’t date,” he said finally. Then he poured his coffee and glided out of the kitchen.

Sakura frowned.

Maybe she’d better not suggest it anyway. She wasn’t sure how delicate Yamato’s sensibilities might be.

Eventually, she settled on a cheesy horror film. If Yamato didn’t like ridiculous horror then she’d go with the sci-fi.

Having determined this much, she hovered indecisively between calling and texting, and then thought - well, screw it. If he hated her choice of film it’d be a lot easier to tell from his voice.

She called Yamato, and he did pick up almost immediately. “Hi? Hi! Sakura-san,” his voice sounded briefly annoyed, and then pleased when he recognised her. That was encouraging.

“Hi! Am I interrupting?”

“Oh,” he said, and then sighed, “no. Just trying to find Kakashi-sempai. I... think he’s in his office. Maybe.”

There was a pause and the rustle of paperwork.

Sakura felt briefly but intensely sorry for him. “Nothing that he won’t be late for anyway, then,” she decided, prompting another sad sigh from Yamato. “So, I was thinking, did you want to see Bedlam Horror?”

There was a pause. “Is that the one about the squad of cheerleaders trapped in a 19th century asylum?”

“Yes,” she said, drawing the word out. It sounded so much worse when framed like that. “I mean, if you don’t want to there are other films. I was thinking maybe the Celestial Journey reboot, if--?”

“No, no, I’m good with the cheerleaders in the murderous zombie asylum. There’s nothing like cheesy horror.”

She beamed. “Awesome. It’s at eight, though, so we might want to eat first?”

“Yeah, I’ll make a booking. Do you want me to pick you up..?”

Horrible visions of Yamato-sempai meeting Zetsu or Hidan or Kakuzu bloomed in her mind’s eye. She felt faintly queasy even thinking about it.

“ _No_ ,” she said, much too quickly. “No. Sorry,” she cleared her throat. “Uh, it’s not you. It’s... look, you haven’t met lunatics until you’ve met my housemates, seriously. Can I meet you there?”

He laughed. “I was an undergrad once, too, Sakura-san. I know all about awful room mates. I’ll text you the address.”

“Thanks,” she relaxed. She was pretty sure he did not know at all about living with people like her housemates, because if there had been many housemates like hers the city would have imploded by now. But she gracefully decided not to correct him.

“Hey, um, do you know anybody on campus who can pick locks?” he asked then, sounding a little sheepish and awkward.

“Pick...” Sakura frowned at her phone for a moment.

“Kakashi-sempai hasn’t left his office in three days and I’m not sure if he’s dead or he just climbed out the window. I don’t want to, um, call the police for nothing? But he’s got some kind of... deal... with security.”

“Oh,” said Sakura. She thought about that for a few seconds. “I’m really not nearly as surprised by that as I should be.”

Yamato said nothing in response to this, which Sakura took to mean that he was much, _much_ more diplomatic than she was.

Nonetheless she fired off a text to Deidara in the hopes that he would a) know how to pick locks and b) feel willing to help Yamato out. She knew he and Itachi were both on campus, and she didn’t think Itachi would be persuaded to help out. If Itachi did have lock picking skills, he wasn’t in the habit of using them to break into staff offices at school.

<From: Deidara-kun  
Timestamp: 3:32 PM  
Message body: wait you want me to break into a professor’s office?>

<To: Deidara-kun  
Timestamp: 3:33 PM  
Message body: ...it’s for a good cause?>

<From: Deidara-kun  
Timestamp: 3:33 PM  
Message body: fft, of course i’ll do it, you’re just unexpectedly badass today, Sakura-pyon>

<From: Yamato-sempai  
Timestamp: 4:43 PM  
Message body: where did you find this guy he’s a lunatic>

Sakura decided not to respond to that text.

 

* * *

 

 

Sakura didn’t know who had let intelligence of her date slip to Hidan, but if she ever found out there would be pain.

She did not, initially, really understand what the problem was. To her understanding, he’d just gone _completely insane._

_Insaner._

He followed her around, trailing animal blood - or, at least, she hoped it was animal blood - and talking. And _talking_. “And,” he was saying, waving one bloodied hand, “you know, heathens are seriously unworthy of the pure people, there’s no fucking competition, it’s even in the scripture - I told you last month! The third chant,” and here he slipped into the strange liquid tongue of his religion, which Sakura was quickly becoming used to hearing. Heaven help her, it was almost starting to be intelligible in places.

“Right.” She was searching through the kitchen cupboard for a cup, pulling out one of Deidara’s with a painted, frowny faced owl on it. “Got it.”

Deidara himself was hunched over the kitchen table, mixing a glaze. He waved vaguely when she came in and otherwise ignored the conversation - such as it was.

He made a frustrated noise. “It means that companionship between worshippers is a sacred trust, enjoined in the spirit of mutual suffering!” He flung one hand out wide, leaving a spatter trail on the kitchen tiles.

“Believe me,” she muttered, “I know all about suffering.”

“Exactly!”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“HEATHENS,” he said, sounding terribly aggravated in that way that made his voice shrill up, “there’s no worthwhile companionship to be had with heathens!”

Sakura scratched her head. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t like me because I’m not a Jashinist?”

His face went red. Then it kept going. He purpled faintly. Then he swore, loudly and slapped her over the back of the head. “Fucking... _idiots_!” he growled, much as though he couldn’t find the right words for how annoyed he was, which was definitely a first.

“Hey! Don’t hit Sakura-chan, you giant inbred buttface!” Deidara bellowed after him. “She’s not like - she’s not _Kakuzu_ , you dick!”

Hidan flipped him off one-handed, not even looking back as he stormed out of the kitchen.

Bemused and kind of sore, Sakura rubbed the back of her head gingerly. “I ...have no idea what just happened,” she said slowly.

“Hidan,” Deidara said darkly, as though that explained everything.

It kind of did.

“Yeah,” Sakura agreed. “But that was weirder than usual. I actually thought he kind of liked me? Although, uh, it’s not that easy to tell,” she admitted.

“Well,” Deidara said, carefully not looking at her, “I think he was trying to tell you he doesn’t like your date.”

Sakura blinked. Slowly. “How,” she wondered, “did he even find out?”

Deidara shrugged nonchalantly.

She eyed him suspiciously. “You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?” she said in a dangerous voice.

“Sakura-pyon,” he said in an aggrieved voice. “Your mistrust wounds me. You can date whoever you like, even if they are creepy staring-eyed fluffy idiots.”

“Right,” drawled Sakura. “He told you?”

“Well, I asked him how he knew you. Dating your teacher, Sakuchin, very scandalous.”

“He’s not my teacher,” she rolled her eyes. “Who else did you tell?”

“Hmm,” Deidara said, wiping his hands on his jeans before reaching for his phone. “Uh... Kisame... and Kakuzu and Hidan... Sasori-sempai, obviously... Zetsu-san, who told Tobi-baka... Jiraiya-san said he found out from _Orochimaru_ -sensei. I didn’t even think you’d met...”

“We met today.” Sakura covered her face with her hands. “So,” she clarified. “Like, everyone.”

Deidara shrugged. “If you were ashamed of him you shouldn’t have said yes, Sakura-pyin.”

“I’m not -- God, don’t you people have _anything_ better to do?”

Deidara laughed. “Yes. Heaps, probably,” he agreed.

Sakura decided to just make her cup noodles and go to bed. She didn’t need to have this discussion with Deidara, who was clearly getting much too much amusement value out of it. There was silence while her kettle boiled, silence while she poured her water. There was even silence when she smoothed the lid of her styrofoam noodle cup back down.

“Ne, Sakura-chan,” Deidara asked then, breaking the silence as her noodles steamed, covered, for several minutes.

“Yes?” she asked suspiciously.

“So..." there was a pause. “Are you _really_ going to take him to see the Icha Icha movie?” he asked, eyes alight. “It’s basically just porn, you know.”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

“So you _are_ \--?”

“ _No_ ,” she said righteously, offended as though she hadn’t been contemplating just that earlier. And then she threw her plastic fork at him and marched off to bed with her noodles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, '-un’ is used for women sometimes where ‘chan’ is too diminuitive, but there isn’t the equality implied by '-san.' Depending on the culture of the place, you might get a teacher calling a female student ‘-kun.’ It’s relatively modern, and not super common, but in my view it works for Orochimaru.
> 
> Comments appreciated, as always, or if you want to ask questions or you just want to see what it is I do with my free time (spoiler: not very much) you can find me over at [[tumblr]](tozettewrites.tumblr.com)


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura attends a date, Kakashi is a troll and explosions happen.

“I hate waxing my legs,” Sakura informed her phone as she ripped another strip from her shin.

“Everybody hates it,” Ino said cheerfully, her voice made a bit weird and flat by the loudspeaker function. “But it’s the price you pay for looking awesome.”

“Okay,” she grunted, smoothing down another cotton sheet and gritting her teeth. One, two -- _riiip_. Yeowch. “But have we considered _not_ looking awesome?”

“Considered and rejected,” said Ino firmly.

Sakura sighed. She was almost done, anyway. Her hair was pale, and, being pink, not that easy to see against her skin. It would be alright if she missed a hair here or there. “Okay, well, he said the restaurant was pretty informal. I’m thinking the blue skirt and a -”

“No, nooo, not them, the black jeans we got, the cut off ones, with that little empire-line blouse.”

Sakura scratched the side of her neck thoughtfully. The blouse in question was a jewel-toned green that came down past her hips and had little cap sleeves. With the black jeans, cut off somewhere just above her knees...

Ino always was good for picking outfits. Apparently when she couldn‘t even see the outfits. One of her superpowers.

“Yeah, that could work,” Sakura said, ripping free the last of her leg hair with a sigh of relief. She contemplated the problem of shoes for a moment. Sneakers or stilettos? Boots? Square heels? Maybe wedge heels.

She rubbed her forehead. “Makeup,” she said to Ino, pulling on a pair of raspberry-coloured street shoes. It was unlikely that anything would go wrong, but her recent experiences had made Sakura a bit leery about being caught out in high heels.

“Minimal,” Ino said immediately. “Informal dining, probably relatively low light - it’s all going to be pretty flattering anyway,” she pointed out.

Sakura hummed and nodded. They chatted for a few minutes while Sakura painted her fingernails and let the enamel dry, but afterwards Ino let her go - with her best wishes, of course - to dress herself and get ready.

Then Sakura snuck out of the house. Sasori glanced at her, once, when she moved past the doorway to the kitchen, but he didn’t say anything or comment on her makeup or her hair or anything, so she kept her head down and kept going.

She breathed a thin sigh of relief when nobody else noticed her leaving, then adjusted her bag on her shoulder and headed out. She had a date!

 

* * *

 

The name of the place Yamato picked was ‘Naked for Fennel,’ which didn’t really fill Sakura with confidence initially.

She met him on the street outside, where he was leaning against a wall, checking his phone. Her eyes flicked up and down his figure - jeans, street shoes and a tee-shirt - good, she wasn’t underdressed. Under all that, he was fit, too: strong, long-limbed, loose-muscled. He didn’t light her insides on fire, but she looked at him and she smiled at him and he smiled back and she thought, yeah, she could be attracted to this guy.

“Don’t look so suspicious,” he said with a half-smile when she raised her eyebrow at the sign. He showed her toward a tiny doorway that looked like nothing so much as a fire escape. “It’s a nice place.”

Inside, the walls were lined with dangling ferns and there were bicycles with their wheels missing dangling from the ceiling. The walls were haphazardly adorned with stickers and notices: looking for housemates, selling second hand goods, have you seen this dog. Sakura’s eyes lingered on one for a far-left socialist group and another that read ‘MEAT IS MURDER.’

The employees were almost uniformly pierced, tattooed and dreadlocked. The tables were communal and decorated with an odd assortment of greenery that looked like it had been hacked from somebody’s garden, and they also bore cute little candles, red and orange and yellow, decorated with stylised suns and stars, and the tiny licks of flame gave the place a warm glow.

“Where did you _find_ this place?” Sakura asked, peering around. There was a mysterious excitement in drifting through crowds of fierce, self-possessed women with shaven heads and pierced noses and dark-eyed men with their skinny jeans and spiked jewellery. 

“University,” Yamato said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m never going to graduate,” he admitted, rolling his eyes.

“I imagine Kakashi-sensei’s influence isn’t helpful there,” Sakura said with what she felt was impressive restraint. “Did you end up finding him in his office, anyway?”

“He was in there. He... didn’t seem that pleased to see your friend,” he said slowly.

“Really,” said Sakura blandly.

“He wouldn’t say how they knew each other though.”

“You don’t say,” murmured Sakura, quickly dropping her eyes to the menu.

“Uh-huh,” said Yamato, eyes heavy on her face. He opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and then closed it again.

The restaurant was, perhaps predictably, vegetarian, so the menu was actually quite interesting to Sakura. She was usually the sort of person who completely lost interest at the idea of a meal with no flesh in it, but the food sounded... not that bad, actually.

Honestly, Sakura usually thought of vegetarian food as ‘kind of like real food, but with tofu instead of meat.’ She glanced cautiously sideways to inspect their neighbours’ dinner.

They were sharing an enormous platter of roasted root vegetables with garlic and some kind of seed - and torn up chunks of lightly-toasted bread and a bowl of hommus. Huh. On the other side somebody had a flat, square pizza topped with caramelised onion, mushrooms and soft white cheese.

She looked back at the menu. So many choices. “Are you a vegetarian, then?” she wondered.

“Mostly,” Yamato shrugged. “The environmental impact of the meat industry’s really kind of...” He must have noticed her glazing eyes because he smiled a little. “Uh. Yes. Mostly. Sorry, ethics student,” he said ruefully.

Sakura nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, okay.” She tried to imagine the scorn with which her housemates would greet this confession.

She could swear she actually _heard_ the derisive noise Hidan would have made.

“Fucking _heathens_ , what did I tell you,” somebody said loudly behind her.

Sakura blinked.

She turned.

She couldn’t see Hidan anywhere.

Maybe she was just...

...well, no, not hallucinating Hidan. That would require her to leave her date immediately and go find a doctor. But maybe anticipating Hidan really loudly inside her own head. From constant exposure.

That was not that much better.

She was not going to think about that. She shook her head. “That’s fair,” she said, turning back to Yamato and smiling brightly. “Honestly I don’t eat a lot of vegetarian food. It always seems kind of...”

“Non-meaty?” asked a totally different but _equally unwelcome_ voice.

Sakura was not hallucinating Kakashi.

He was definitely there. Smiling. Cheerful.

Yamato made a noise that might have been a whimper. He closed his eyes, presumably to avoid looking at Kakashi. “What are you doing here?” he asked weakly.

“Maa...” Kakashi pulled out a chair and slumped between them at the table. He didn’t answer Yamato’s query. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, which was rarely a thing he ever said when he was _actually late_ , in Sakura’s memory. His face was mostly covered by a long, dark green scarf, and his eyepatch had rhinestones on it. _Rhinestones_.

“You’re not late,” said Sakura, glowering without even looking at him. “You weren’t invited.”

“I heard my two favourite students were here. How could I resist?” he said cheerfully.

“I didn’t invite him,” Yamato said forlornly from behind his hands, which had migrated up his face to cover his eyes. The skin Sakura could see behind them looked red.

Poor thing, she thought, feeling a wave of sympathy. “Hey. Yamato-sempai,” She reached out and tugged on one of his hands. He peered through his fingers at her. “It’s okay,” she said.

Yamato’s brows furrowed. “It really is not okay,” he informed her, looking at her with big, sad sloe eyes.

“Well.” She paused. “Not _okay_ , but...” She wanted to explain that she knew exactly what Kakashi could be like, with all of his unreliable, bedroom-sneaking, weird ways, but she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it with both of them right there.

“Excellent,” said Kakashi. “I’ll have the steamed vegetables with mixed shoots, fresh mint and coriander with the roasted peanuts and satay sauce,” he said to a waitress, who gave him a singularly unimpressed look down the length of her pierced nose.

Sakura looked at Yamato and raised her eyebrows. Her hand was still on his. It was warm and pleasant, even if there was no particular excitement in the contact. He had clean, well-trimmed nails. That was nice.

He heaved a sigh. “Could I get the mixed vegetables and chick peas, with the minted yoghurt, date and almond cous cous?”

Oooh, Sakura thought, once again distracted by the menu. That sounded really good... her eyes drifted. Eventually she settled on a risotto with three different kinds of mushroom and simmered in white wine and pesto. _Nice_.

The waitress spared a displeased glance at Kakashi, but nodded and disappeared with their orders.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider getting that to go,” Sakura suggested drily, side-eyeing Kakashi.

He smiled back at her, his visible eye crinkling into a crescent. “Oh, they don’t do that here, Student-san,” he said sweetly. “All that paper and plastic. It’s not good for the environment.”

Sakura glanced at Yamato to see if he was telling the truth. “I didn’t anticipate it being a problem," Yamato said, looking anywhere but at her.

She rubbed her temples gently. There was a headache blooming from the base of her skull. “It’s...”

The waitress reappeared with their meals. She set down Yamato’s and Sakura’s, and then paused, looking around. “Sorry,” she said flatly, setting Kakashi’s down with a clatter. “The last table was just taken. There’s nowhere else to put your friend.”

“It’s fine,” said Yamato, giving her a smile that was at least seventy per cent fake.

She gave him a dubious look, but shrugged and left.

Determined to enjoy some part of the evening, Sakura attacked her food with enthusiasm. It was _really good_. She was unfairly surprised - hippy food seemed like it should be good for you, not tasty.

“Maa, Student-san, you have such an appetite,” Kakashi drawled. “There’s rice on your chin.”

She flipped him off, then brushed away the single grain of rice she’d dropped. What? It was good.

“I’m glad you like it,” Yamato ground out, glowering at Kakashi.

“Yes,” said Sakura, just as flatly and awkwardly, “it’s great.”

Kakashi ate his food, unperturbed by their baleful attention. Somehow he still managed to avoid showing anybody his face. Somebody behind Sakura was laughing uproariously, a shrieking cackle that raised the hairs on her neck. Her eyebrow twitched.

“What do you do when you’re not revolutionising medical ethics, Yamato-sempai?” she simpered, trying very hard to get her evening back on track.

Kakashi snorted into his food. “Is that what you told her?”

Kakashi jerked as though, and this was just conjecture on Sakura’s behalf, but almost as though somebody wearing size eight ladies shoes had booted him in the shin.

“Ah, I wouldn’t necessarily call it _revolutionising_ , Sakura-san,” Yamato said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “But, um, I like gardening, and -”

“He does,” Kakashi agreed. “He has tiny potplants everywhere. He writes cutesy names on their pots and sings to them every morning. It’s adorable,” he said blithely.

Yamato stared at his hands, which were splayed flat against the table. His face flushed. “I--”

“He puts scarves on them in winter,” Kakashi added happily.

“That was _one time_!” Yamato hissed.

“One _adorable_ time,” Kakashi countered. “Don’t be ashamed of yourself, kohai-kun.”

Sakura cringed inside. She didn’t care if he “Really! You’re much better than I am, then; I think I have a black thumb. I once killed a rosemary bush,” she admitted.

Kakashi paused and inhaled like he was going to talk again so she forged onward, words spilling out: “In fact, my neighbour is really into gardening! He’s been telling me all sorts of really interesting things about plants recently-”

“Ah, yes. Student-san lives next door to a lunatic,” Kakashi interrupted happily, “he attacked me with secateurs when I went to visit -”

“In the middle of the night!”

“-while I was minding my own business-”

“Climbing through my window!”

“He grows hallucinogens on his balcony, which they share. Cozy little lo--”

Sakura slammed her fist into the table with such force that it creaked alarmingly. “Kakashi-sensei,” she said in a dead calm voice, “if you don’t stop talking _I_ will attack you with secateurs, and no jury in the world will convict me.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“Maa, Student-san! So violent,” Kakashi said cheerfully.

“ _I will show you violence_ ,” she growled.

“LET GO,” somebody bellowed from somewhere deep in the restaurant, and _oh god_. “SHE NEEDS ME TO HOLD HIM DOWN.”

“...Ne, Student-san, isn’t that one of your --”

“RINGTONES,” she shrieked, slapping her hand over Kakashi’s face. “Yes! Yes, that is one of my ringtones, I’m sorry, I will turn my phone onto silent, JUST A MOMENT YAMATO-SEMPAI.”

Kakashi reeled away, rubbing his scarf-covered mouth with one hand.

Yamato coughed gently into his hand. “Sakura-san...”

She blinked. Smiled. “Yamato-sempai,” she said happily.

“Sakura-san,” he nodded agreeably, and there was a smile playing around his lips, which at least meant he didn’t hate her.

“This food is great,” Kakashi interjected.

A hand clapped down upon Kakashi’s shoulder. A dexterous, long-fingered hand with strange calluses and stains.

Deidara leaned over Kakashi’s shoulder and smiled benignly at everyone.

“ _What_ ,” said Sakura, “are you doing here?”

“Making sure Hidan doesn’t maul your date, yeah. Excuse us,” he added sweetly, flashing a peace sign at Yamato.

Then he yanked Kakashi away, chair and all, and dragged him off through the restaurant. Kakashi did not resist all that much - in fact, he snagged his plate on the way, and continued picking at his vegetables as Deidara hauled him off.

“That guy is a lunatic,” Yamato said, eyeing Deidara. “How do you even know him?”

Sakura bristled. “I live with him,” she said in a slightly tense tone. Yeah, he was a lunatic... but that didn’t mean _Yamato_ could say so.

“Wow,” muttered Yamato. “And it doesn’t bother you that you live with an explosives freak with lockpicks?” he asked, cutting his eyes sideways toward her.

“He’s not a freak,” she said staunchly. “He’s--”

Yamato turned his face back toward her, raising his eyebrows. “He’s what?”

“He’s Deidara-kun,” she said after a moment’s wavering.

Yamato sucked in a deep breath. “It’s nice that you’re so willing to defend your friends,” he said, smiling at her.

Sakura blinked once. That was good, right? She smiled back. “Okay, he’s a little... odd. But he’s good. He made Kakashi-sensei go away,” she pointed out.

Yamato nodded. “Undeniably a good thing,” he agreed.

They smiled awkwardly at each other.

Now, Sakura thought, as long as Hidan didn’t show his face - could Deidara really ride keep both of them under control? She doubted it - their date might be able to be salvaged.

Across the restaurant somebody yelped.

Then, “Shit! FIRE!”

“Fire?” Sakura turned toward...

... the trail of destruction Deidara had left when he dragged Kakashi away. Candles rolled on the floor. A tablecloth was burning brightly.

Somebody had, apparently, spilled something very alcoholic, because with a sudden _whoosh_ one of the table legs went up in flames - and then somebody’s dress.

The lady stumbled away from her table with a shriek, and one of the waitstaff was immediately there, beating her dress with a soaked tea towel.

While people were fussing over the lady whose clothes were on fire, the flames moved from one table cloth to the next. A glass bottle, heated unevenly, cracked - and apparently it was full of something frightfully alcoholic, because the sudden upsweep of flames was _huge_ and _terrifying_.

There were suddenly many things on fire.

“Shit,” said Sakura.

Living with Deidara had given Sakura a fairly good handle on what a dangerous fire looked like, versus a fire that was just there because Deidara liked looking at it. This? Was edging closer and closer toward ‘dangerous’ by the second.

Sakura slung her bag over her shoulder and got up. “Come on,” she said to Yamato, “let’s get out of here before everybody else realises they need to evacuate.”

He looked from her, to the fire, and back to her. “Okay,” he agreed.

They made it halfway to the door before the alarms started to blare, and by the time everybody had scrambled for their things and gotten out of their chairs they were more or less out of the building.

Hidan and Deidara were already outside, bickering. Kakashi had apparently left with them, and seemed torn between watching them warily and watching the flickering inside the building.

“You,” Sakura growled, striding toward Kakashi. “ _You_ ,” she hissed. She felt, more than heard, the argument between Hidan and Deidara still. “I can’t believe you! You show up and make a mess of everything and _set the building on fire_ because you’re too lazy to leave when you -”

“Student-san, that’s not fair,” Kakashi said in a tone somewhere between placating and condescending, “your friend was the one who knocked over the candles while we -”

“SHUT UP,” she bellowed.

Yamato flinched, and, oh, god, she was never going to be able to look him in the eye again after this.

“AND YOU,” she yelled, turning on her heel to snarl at Hidan.

“Shit,” said Deidara suddenly, turning his head toward the building, where the last stragglers were still streaming out. “I left my bag in there.”

The blood left Sakura’s face so quickly she felt lightheaded.

“Sakura-san?” Yamato’s voice seemed like it was coming from very far away.

“We need to leave,” she said, grabbing his arm in a crushing grip. “Yamato-sempai, we need to leave _now_.”

“Okay,” he said gently, “if that’s what you want, let’s go. Are you all right?" He fell into step with her, “Do you... do you want me to walk you home, or --?”

“Sakura-chan!” Deidara’s voice cut through the exchange, and Yamato looked like he might, finally, be edging toward losing his temper. The man had the patience of a _saint_. She turned toward where he was apparently hustling Hidan into the car. “You should really, um, probably not walk, yeah. Do you want a lift?”

Sakura blinked once. Whatever he said next, she did not hear, because she’d grabbed Yamato’s elbow and broken into a dead sprint.

“Run,” she snapped at him, letting go so she had the use of her arms. Sprinting now, talking later.

Yamato, bless his obliging heart, broke into a run next to her. They sprinted for three or so blocks, dodging between other pedestrians, and finally fell back to a steady jog.

Sakura was so glad she’d taken up running. Losing weight wasn’t enough motivation, no - but running for her life? Hell yes.

“Why are we running?” panted Yamato.

“Deidara had -” she paused, both for breath and to come up with a lie, “- art supplies, in his bag. For a project. They’re -” steady breath “- volatile.”

Then came the explosion. The sheer sound of it was a force, one a sudden blast that felt like a huge, physical thing. Hot wind and smoke streamed past, and the sounds of people screaming burst upon the air.

They stumbled, staggered, and finally came to a halt.

“ _Art supplies_?” Yamato said incredulously, leaning against the wall of a nearby building for support. He looked behind them at the flames soaring into the sky, lighting everything a smoky, apocalyptic red. The streetscape, filled with confused, yelling, milling people, looked like one of the nicer suburbs of hell.

“Er,” said Sakura. She’d expected an explosion, but she certainly had not expected _that_ explosion. “Allegedly,” she hedged.

“Sakura-san,” said Yamato slowly. “I, uh, maybe we should give the movie a miss.”

She heaved a sigh. “Yeah,” she said. “All right.”

“It’s not you, it’s...”

She held up a hand for peace. “I get it,” she said. And she did. She got it. She still didn’t like hearing it, though, because it hurt to be rejected. It was a basic and human thing. Rejection. It hurt.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said shortly.

“Do you, um, want me to walk you home?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine,” Sakura said, mustering up a fixed smile. Yamato was covered in dark dust and smoke stains, and his hair was sticking up something awful, which meant that she must also look like a complete fright.

“Okay,” he said, in a tone that was really good at hiding his relief.

She sighed. She wasn’t sure she liked how diplomatic her date was.

They parted ways.

The walk home wasn’t long, but it was long enough for Sakura’s feelings to stew. When she got home, Hidan and Deidara were both there, having an argument.

Kakuzu had, at some point, been reading a journal, but he’d put it down to watch them snap and snarl at one another like hungry dogs.

Sakura didn’t say anything.

She closed the door behind her, feeling her heart beating hard and her eyes watering. She wasn’t going to cry. She _wasn’t_. She didn’t even really _want_ to date Yamato -- he was just, he’d been nice, and cute, and she’d thought maybe she’d come to want him if she gave him a chance, but --

She wasn’t going to cry.

And if she was, it was because she was _angry_.

She took a deep, steadying breath, then marched up behind the pair and smacked Hidan over the head.

“Ow," he said, rubbing the back of his skull. He glowered at her. “Hey! What the fuck, I didn’t do anything!”

Sakura glared at him and did it again. “You’re an _idiot_ ,” she said, flat and hard and with feeling. She glanced once at Deidara, but she wasn't even sure what to say to him.

Then, jaw clenched, she stormed off upstairs to get cleaned up.

“HEY! DEIDARA BLEW UP THE FUCKING BUILDING, WHAT THE FUCK?”

Sakura ignored his yelling.

Trailing damp footsteps from the bathroom to her bedroom, Sakura fished her phone out of her pile of dusty and soiled clothing to text Ino, but then after a second she thought better of it.

<To: Itachi  
Timestamp: 8:03 PM  
Message body: tonight I tried to go on a date but Hidan and Deidara followed me and blew the whole building up>

<From: Itachi  
Timestamp: 8:05 PM  
Message body: That’s unfortunate, but if a minor explosion put him off a second date you're well rid of him. Perhaps you should thank Deidara.>

Sakura snorted softly, rolled her eyes, and locked the door behind her.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a not-that-grand heist, Kakashi is almost on time, and Sakura tries to explain the glory of Jashin-sama.

Sakura remained in a foul mood literally for days, and it actually got worse when she came to the - perhaps inevitable - conclusion that Deidara was avoiding her. It made perfect sense, of course, that in the interest of avoiding getting smacked in the face, he’d avoid Sakura - but perversely it made her even angrier. How dare he try to avoid righteously inflicted suffering? He was definitely in the wrong and he deserved anything she felt like dishing out, dammit.

Her rational mind pointed out that he had not, actually, intended to blow up the whole restaurant and ruin her date - and additionally that the explosion had really just been the icing on the cake after Kakashi’s mess.

Nevertheless, Sakura’s mood was dark, and her next shift at TRIVIA was made more awkward by her temper, which mostly manifested itself in the burning desire to throw really hot coffee into Jiraiya’s face.

...Because sometime between the explosion and her shift, Kakashi had managed to tell Jiraiya about her disastrous date with Yamato and he _would not shut up about it_.

“The vagaries of youth,” he lamented smugly at her, leaning on the counter and rolling a coin across his knuckles with the expertise of long practice.

“You don’t say,” she gritted out, wishing it wasn’t such a slow morning.

“You don’t have a lot of luck with men, do you?” he said, eyes glinting. “I mean, you asked out Itachi-kun first, didn’t you?”

“Oh, look,” Sakura said grimly, “a customer.”

That would have been fortuitous, except the next person through the door was actually Konan, who had brought a huge tub of salad for the lunch rush but did not actually provide Sakura with much in the way of distraction from Jiraiya’s commentary.

Pein handed her a latte, which did take her attention away from Jiraiya for a few momennts. He’d drawn a curling fern leaf across the top of her coffee, and for a moment she was content just looking at it. “Thanks.”

“You know, you can’t date him, either,” Jiraiya interjected cheerfully.

One of Sakura’s hands twitched. “Is that so, Owner-san,” she said in a growl.

Jiraiya‘s face took on a very tragic cast. “Pein-kun denies his needs as a man--”

“I don’t date,” Pein interrupted placidly, throwing away an empty milk bottle. “As a matter of personal preference.”

“I think he suffered some kind of trauma as a child,” Jiraiya informed her.

Sakura ignored him. “I thought you and Konan-san...” she glanced uncertainly at Konan, who didn’t seem to be listening.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Pein murmured. “Konan is like a sister to me.”

“Don’t listen to him, there’s only one bed in their apartment,” Jiraiya said sagely, leaning over to take a cookie from the jar next to the cash register.

Sakura blinked. Wait, so --? She frowned. Either Jiraiya was teasing him about sleeping with Konan, or he was teasing him about _not_ sleeping with Konan, so --

“There’s no way to win with you, is there, Owner-san?” Sakura asked drily.

“Siblings share beds sometimes, too,” Pein said without missing a beat.

“Er,” said Sakura, who was suddenly not sure she wanted to be a part of this conversation anymore.

“Besides,” he added mildly, “she’s warm.”

“I am,” Konan agreed, appearing from apparently nowhere to settle her salad into the refrigerated display unit. Sakura glanced at it briefly - chick peas, mint, coriander, strips of carrot and haloumi, it looked like. She could pick out fennel seeds and smell smoked paprika. Konan poured a mix of oil, lemon juice and honey across it cheerfully.

“That looks amazing,” Sakura informed her.

“Thank you," said Konan demurely.

The salad actually did look pretty good, but Sakura was also feigning more interest than she felt because she did not want to discuss anybody’s sex life with Jiraiya. Well - except fictional characters’, of course. He was a rather remarkable writer, after all.

Nevertheless, her shift continued to be quiet and it continued in this terrible vein of conversation. Eventually Jiraiya got sick of trying to get a reaction out of Pein - which Sakura suspected he’d have to pry from Pein’s cold, dead hands, really - and returned to teasing Sakura.

Sakura, for her part, began to eye their skillet as a potential weapon.

In the end, though, Sakura was still, almost helplessly, more annoyed with Deidara than she was with Jiraiya, and that was saying something.

 

* * *

 

  
“He’s being ridiculous,” Sakura complained to Itachi a day later, while they were taking a study break outside the law library, where they had met up in deference to his first exam being sooner than hers.

“That’s not unusual,” Itachi pointed out, staring into the depths of his take-away coffee as though it had all the answers.

The answers to what, Sakura wasn’t sure.

“True,” she muttered unkindly. Then she glanced at him. “You look tired,” she said neutrally.

Itachi even wore tiredness well, in a dangerously heroin-chic kind of way - all hooded eyes and tangled hair and reddened lips. His fingers were long and pale and painfully beautiful around his paper cup. Itachi had very clean hands, which --

Nope. Sakura wasn’t staring at them.

Well, okay, she was - but attraction was a hard thing to turn off, especially when she could see the criminally elegant shift of muscles and tendons under his skin when he rolled up his sleeves. Forearms. Seriously.

She knew intellectually that she’d never have him (not even for the thirty hot minutes she really, really wanted) but surely there was nothing wrong with, you know, _looking_...

Itachi grunted. It was not a flattering sound. “I have had a few late nights,” he admitted, and Sakura had almost forgotten what it was she’d asked him.

“Exams?” she said with sympathy. Because he was further along in his studies, Itachi was doing some extremely advanced units this term. She didn’t envy him.

“Yes,” he said. “And no. There’s been other work. Actually,” he added, “are you busy this afternoon? I might need your help with some of it.”

Sakura paused and bit her lip. “I’m free, but I don’t know...”

“It has to do with the research I’ve been tasked with,” he said, almost pleasantly, but Sakura was very aware that any research Itachi had been doing on black ops was her fault. And he did look so tired.

He was probably doing some seriously illegal stuff for her sake, which --

Well, not that Itachi hadn’t done seriously illegal stuff before, she knew. She’d seen him stab a guy, after all. Surely stabbing Hidan was just as illegal as stabbing a normal person...

Sakura wasn’t sure she wanted to be involved in whatever Itachi was doing. Collecting information, what did that entail? Did it mean beating somebody up and asking questions? Did it mean breaking into police records? Things like that could get her into so much trouble.

She hesitated. “We can discuss it later?” she hedged. It wasn’t as though they could talk about Secret Gang Business while they were hovering outside the law library in the middle of the morning. “I have an ethics tutorial in an hour, but I’m free after that.”

Itachi blinked once, slowly, and then nodded.

The pair returned by consensus to the library, where they spent the following fifty minutes or so in studious silence. Itachi was, in general, a very good person to study in silence with: he had the knack of projecting the air of a very determined student. The whole atmosphere around him was so repressive that it made it extremely hard for Sakura to get distracted or slack off or distract him with idle chatter unless she wanted to feel really guilty about it.

He wasn’t necessarily a very _pleasant_ study partner, but the system was effective.

At this point in her exam prep, effectiveness was all Sakura could really ask for.

Since she was no longer injured and unable to run, nobody was following Sakura around like a snarling guard dog anymore, so she took the long way to her ethics classroom, revelling in the fresh air and temperate day.

She paused in the doorway, however, when she saw that Kakashi-sensei was teaching his own class.

“Am I in the right room?” she asked stupidly.

He gave her a sleepy look of discontentment.

“Yamato-kun was very insistent,” he drawled, and Sakura flinched.

“Sorry,” she muttered, taking her seat.

“He’ll get over it,” Kakashi said, in a tone of voice that suggested to Sakura that either Yamato would get over it or Kakashi would drag him over it by the hair.

Kakashi-sensei, Sakura discovered to her utter amazement, was actually a competent teacher when he was putting in the slimmest sliver of actual effort. He didn’t seem to enjoy it much, but she came away with a better grasp of several concepts she’d been uncertain of for her exams.

For once, showing up to her ethics tutorial had actually been educational.

“Sakura-san,” said Kakashi as she was gathering her things to leave, “Thursday, five o’clock.”

“Are you going to show up this time?” she sniped, feeling her good will toward him evaporate completely at the reminder.

“Don’t be late,” he said cheerfully.

By the time she’d circumvented the urge to hurl her textbook at him, Kakashi had already left. Dammit.

 

* * *

 

It turned out that Itachi wanted her to help him break into somebody’s house. Their drive took some time, so he had plenty of opportunity to convince her.

“Why me?” she asked incredulously, staring at him over the handbreak of his car.

He glanced at her once, but returned his eyes to the road quickly.

“Tactical choice,” he said, not sounding very concerned by her alarm. “If we end up caught by the police, I’ve got a pretty girl with me - and you’ve got a scholarship and no criminal record,” he said. “And I’m a police officer’s son.”

Sakura eyed him, valiantly ignoring how he’d called her pretty. “So?”

“A boy and a girl breaking into student housing will sound a lot more like some kind of... youthful indiscretion than a planned search of the premises,” he shrugged one shoulder. “Police officers like narratives that are easy to swallow.”

Sakura licked her lips nervously. “Is there much chance of getting caught?” she wondered.

Itachi looked like he was considering that for a second. She could almost see the numbers clicking over behind his dark eyes, careful calculations and sharp little thoughts.

“Not really,” he said after a moment. “But I’d rather not risk it.”

Right, thought Sakura, contemplating. The worst part was, it actually made sense. And of course Itachi wanted to walk away with a warning and no record if they did get caught - most of his family was involved with the police force, weren’t they?

She took a deep breath. “Okay, where are we breaking into?”

Itachi didn’t smile, but the next glance he shot her was a warmer one. “My research has indicated that black ops has links to Sabaku Kazemaru--”

“I know that name,” Sakura murmured thoughtfully. “Is he famous?”

“An MP,” Itachi said, face blank.

A politician, then. Sort of like being famous, Sakura thought, but less interesting. And probably less attractive.

“Wait, we’re breaking into a _politician’s house_?” she demanded, jerking from her relaxed slump against the passenger seat to sitting upright.

“No,” said Itachi, pulling into the parking lot of a supermarket, “his daughter lives in a share house here.”

Sakura waited until they’d made it out of his car before pressing him for details. She fell into step beside him. From the outside, they probably just looked like two twenty-something students - maybe even two dating students, she thought (only a little wistfully) - walking along. Aside from the cars that flashed past, there were few people around. It was as safe a place as any to talk.

Which was true. They hadn’t actually done anything illegal yet.

She told herself firmly to get a grip. The worst that could happen was she’d get arrested for breaking into another student’s house. They’d chalk it up to some kind of stupid stunt, and then - what, maybe a fine or something. It’d be all right.

“Her name is Temari. Kankuro-san is her brother. He borrows her computer,” he explained, and, wow, Sakura wasn’t sure she wanted to know how Itachi even found this stuff out, but she did take a glance when he produced his phone.

Itachi flicked through his phone images - one of which included Kisame napping in the sun like some kind of huge, blue cat - until he landed on one of Temari. She was a blond woman with hard green eyes and tanned skin. Her mouth smiled, but the lift of her chin was pugnacious. She didn’t look a thing like Kankuro, but...

Sakura did not think she was a woman to be messed with.

“He spends a great deal of his time at her house,” Itachi went on, putting his phone away. “And it’s a long way for Kankuro-san to go to write up assignments, considering he has access to the computers and all required software at Senjuu.”

“Kankuro-san,” she repeated thoughtfully, resettling her bag upon her shoulder. “Okay, that is weird, but what if he’s just, you know, dropping by to say hi to his sister?”

“Her schedule is much too full to account for the time he spends there. She’s taking third year law at Sound U. There’s also some evidence that Sai visits the house there,” he added. “He’s under police surveillance, so we have photographic evidence. It’s definitely not their base of operations, but it’s low-security and we may be able to find something.”

“There may not be a base of operations,” Sakura pointed out. Although the Akatsuki tended to hover around the general area of the sharehouse and TRIVIA, they also seemed to take secret gang business on the road in people’s cars or Madara’s van.

Hell, the only time Sakura had been actually pressed into service with the group’s activities, she’d been in the vehicle and on the move before anybody explained that she’d be helping them blow up a building. It would be very hard, she thought, to keep track of their activities if you were looking for a geographical centre of power.

“That’s true,” Itachi agreed, “although I doubt black ops is run quite the same way we are.”

Sakura thought of Sai’s fake smile and wrinkled her nose. No, she doubted it.

The house they arrived at was precisely the kind of location students rooming together picked: old and poorly-repaired, with several rooms and a wifi connection that Sakura’s phone found halfway down the street. The front garden was a little shaggy but not totally unkempt. The mailbox was full.

“Are you sure nobody’s home?” Sakura wondered.

Itachi nodded, although his dark eyes were narrowed.

It was absurdly easy. The door was locked, so Itachi found a window that had been left cracked, leveraged it open, and shimmied through. His feet touched down on the carpet inside soundlessly.

“You don’t have to come in," said Itachi shortly, in a tone that suggested she was unlikely to be a lot of help if she did. He peered around the dimly lit space inside. “Keep a look out and send me a blank text if somebody’s coming,” he suggested.

“I can do that,” Sakura agreed. That she could do, definitely.

“We might need you to divert somebody’s attention if they do come home early,” he added, already distracted by the pile of opened and discarded mail on one table.

Sakura sure hoped not, because she had no idea how she was meant to stall for time. She nodded anyway. Now that she was here, she was eager to get this over with.

It took Itachi rather longer than she’d actually thought it would. She wasn’t sure what he was doing in there, and he was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear him at all, but she felt like a beacon lingering on the front verandah of the old house, peering out and waiting for somebody to come and catch them in the act.

She fiddled with her phone in the meantime, preparing a blank text under Itachi’s number so all it would take was one smack of the 'send’ button if she did need to alert him.

Time felt like a strange thing. Sakura wasn’t sure if it was going very quickly or very slowly. It would drag and drag, and then as she became increasingly anxious - thinking Itachi was taking too long, wondering if he’d run into some kind of problem, contemplating what she would have to do if somebody did come - the minutes raced ahead.

Itachi was inside maybe twenty minutes before they were interrupted. Sakura saw Temari approaching the house before she saw Sakura, which gave her a few seconds to panic and figure out what to do.

It wasn’t long enough, and Sakura’s mind was still racing when those green eyes locked on her.

She blinked once and smacked the button on her phone to alert Itachi.

“Hi,” she blurted to Temari when the woman stopped only a few feet away, with a kind of weird manic cheer. What was she going to _say_? Oh god, what if she got Itachi caught?

One blond eyebrow rose, apparently independent of the rest of Temari’s face, which stayed more or less the same. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” she asked flatly, bracing her hands on her hips.

Well, so much for politeness.

Thoughts rushed past her. Could she say she was selling something? No, what if Temari decided she wanted to buy it? She didn’t have anything on her. Definitely not. Asking for donations? She had no ID for any charity, and nothing to collect any money in.

She hesitated.

Temari’s mouth settled into a grim line. “Well?” she barked.

An idea occurred to Sakura.

She might never live down the shame of it, but she might avoid being arrested.

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to call the police?”

Oh, god dammit.

“I’m here to introduce you to the glory of Jashin-sama,” she said with a fixed smile.

“Never heard of him,” said Temari, rolling her eyes and fishing inside her bag - presumably for her keys.

Sakura put on a suitably shocked and horrified expression and then launched into an enthusiastic explanation of the glory and ecstacy of human suffering.

She realised, unfortunately, that she sounded almost exactly like Hidan - like a higher pitched, less threatening version of Hidan. Once she’d started talking, Sakura realised it was very possible to just keep going. It wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as the strange other language Hidan used for prayers and sacrifices, but the lilting rhythmic sound he used when rattling off the Jashinist religious text for hour after hour must have had some mnemonic properties, because as soon as she started talking the words seemed to fall into place around one another.

It was so graphic that Temari actually paused, blinking and looking at her incredulously while she went on.

And on.

That was a good thing, Sakura decided as she continued cheerfully proselytising about the god of suffering. The longer she held Temari’s incredulous attention, the longer it would take her to get to her door.

The other woman was actually looking just a little bit queasy. Sakura kept going. She’d lived with the live sacrifices every month, and felt strangely vindicated by the horrified expression on Temari-san’s face.

Sakura felt her phone buzz in her pocket while she was explaining the nature of sacrifice and its connection to Jashin-sama’s consciousness, and she very much hoped that the buzz was to indicate a text from Itachi telling her he’d made it out.

“That’s disgusting,” Temari interrupted incredulously, her mouth twisting at Sakura’s enthusiastic explanation of how a supplicant of Jashin-sama would mix his blood with his enemies’ by laying his hand upon them and stabbing through it to reach their flesh beneath.

“What is?" Sakura said, blinking innocently.

Temari gave her a foul look. “You need to leave,” she told her flatly.

In another life, Sakura thought she might have liked this person: she was hard and blunt but very honest, and, in some ways, she reminded Sakura of Tenten.

“The importance of the duality of suffering is lost upon you,” Sakura surmised sadly. “I will leave.”

Sakura couldn’t help her smile as she moved past Temari and into the street proper again.

“Yes. Go. _Go_. I will personally nail your hands to the steering wheel, you giant freak,” Temari muttered behind her, very nearly inaudibly.

Sakura’s smile grew, and she heard Temari’s key turn in the lock as she left.

She checked her messages, determined that Itachi was indeed texting to let her know he was done, and headed back up to the car park of the supermarket. He was already waiting there for her, and he must have been for a little while because he’d managed to get a container of o-dango, and was dragging the little balls from their stick with his teeth. His expression was mostly blank.

Sakura slumped into the passenger seat of Itachi’s car. Her heart was still racing with leftover adrenalin, but as it drained away she was actually kind of exhausted.

“Was she suspicious?” Itachi asked quietly as the engine rolled over.

“Very suspicious,” said Sakura drily, “although I don’t think she thought I was there to break in by the end - mostly because I was trying to convert to a new religion her on her lawn, I think. I think... you know, most people think very religious people don’t need an excuse to act crazy.”

“Pretending to be a religious evangelist was probably a good choice," Itachi murmured, and Sakura thought it sounded very amused. She didn’t elaborate, because she wasn’t sure she wanted anybody, ever, to know that she’d spent several minutes of her life earnestly lauding Jashin as the true god.

“Did you get what you needed?” she asked in an effort to steer them away from that topic.

“Difficult to say,” Itachi admitted. “Certainly some interesting files and information, but determining its overall relevance will require some work.”

Sakura nodded. That as fine - at least it meant he’d gotten _something_ , so their trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. That was good.

On their way home, Itachi drove straight past Sound U, and Sakura tactfully declined to mention that they could easily have stopped in to see his brother.

 

* * *

 

Thursday came, and despite her misgivings, Sakura ended up back at Kakashi’s house, idly patting the soft fur of his little pug-looking dog through the bars of the security gate. If nothing else, she was sure the dog appreciated the gesture. It didn’t seem as though Kakashi would be that attentive an owner.

“You’ll spoil him,” Kakashi sighed from behind her, only fifteen minutes late.

“Why did I think I’d have to wait for your class to get out?” Sakura wondered rhetorically.

Kakashi’s lone eye, visible between his eye patch and his scarf, crinkled into a smiling crescent. “I don’t know, Sakura-san. Yamato-kun isn’t prone to holding a grudge, so he kindly agreed to take this afternoon’s class.”

‘Kindly agreed,’ Sakura thought with a soft scoffing noise, but she didn’t bother correcting him.

Despite his - well, his personality - Kakashi was very serious as soon as they ended up out the back.

“I don’t know what you’re involved in, Sakura-san,” he said gravely, “but you might want to get out as soon as you can.”

“It’s a little late for that,” she said, shaking her head with a smile.

Kakashi eyed her. “Maybe it seems like fun now, but --”

“Kakashi-sensei, don’t be condescending,” she snapped. “Are you going to teach me, or waste my time?”

She could see his jaw tighten under the dark scarf. There was a long moment of hesitation, and then -- “Fine,” he agreed.

A second later he launched into a discussion of the vulnerable body parts she was meant to aim for - the eyes, the throat and the groin, mainly - and the specific progressions she was supposed to use to get there.

And then, well, maybe unfortunately, it happened that Kakashi was a very, very hands-on teacher.

The following two hours were brutal, and Sakura ended them sweaty and aching and feeling a little like she was going to throw up. If nothing else, learning from Kakashi was good exercise.

It was almost dark by the time he decided they were done.

“Practice is the only way to make it muscle memory,” he said, watching her pick up her bag and wobble toward the door. Somehow he didn’t look like he’d gotten the slightest workout, although even the dogs were shooting Sakura sympathetic looks.

“Are you walking me to the bus stop?” she asked incredulously when he closed the gate behind both of them, instead of staying inside.

Kakashi promptly pulled out a copy of Icha Icha Violence, which Sakura hadn‘t yet read. She eyed the front cover and wondered if she was audacious enough to read it in public. Probably not.

“Hmm?” he asked, not glancing up from the text. Then: “Ah, I’m meant to meet with Gai at fife thirty,” he said.

“It’s seven fifteen,” Sakura pointed out.

“So it is,” Kakashi agreed, sounding totally unconcerned.

Despite his ostensible need to visit the Nekketsu Dojo, Kakashi lingered like a bad smell while Sakura waited for her bus.

“Monday evening,” he told her as she climbed aboard.

“Okay,” she said tiredly. At this point, she didn’t even wonder how Kakashi knew her schedule so well anymore.

When Sakura returned home, Deidara was nowhere to be found. If she was more or less over Kakashi’s part in the Great Dating Ordeal, Sakura figured she could handle forgiving Deidara, who she liked rather more in the first place.

She could hardly communicate her forgiveness if she couldn’t _find_ him.

Well, fine. Sakura would just have to set a trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a huge fan of this chapter, but it is done. Onwards~


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a trap is laid and an idiot is concussed and Orochimaru is a giant snob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Virtually nothing happens in this chapter and honestly I don't even care.

Trapping Deidara turned out to be surprisingly simple.

Observation helped. Sakura couldn’t find him during the day - between annoying other students with explosives at the university art department (presently this existed, temporarily, in uneasy truce with the theatre space) and driving around like a maniac in pursuit of porn-smuggling, he managed to occupy himself with things far away from Sakura. Further to that, he spent long periods of the evening squatting in Sasori’s room, which was one of the few places in the house where Sakura wouldn’t barge immediately in.

That was fine.

He had to sleep eventually.

He returned to his own bed to sleep - probably because Sasori kicked him out, tiny and murderous and terrifying - and even if that was later than she was usually up, Sakura could work with that.

Her alarm went off at 3 AM with a dull buzz - she needn’t have bothered setting it. She hadn’t slept anyway. She turned it off and rolled to her feet silently.

Three minutes later she burst into Deidara’s room, smacked the light switch and dove on top of his bed like a five year old at Christmas.

He yelped and swore and reached for a heavy book to smack her with. Sakura took a bruise to her biceps and then ripped the book out of his hand when he swung to clobber her with it again. It thumped to the floor.

“Sa- Sakura-chan? What the _hell_?”

Half the blankets were trailing off his bed and the rest had become bunched up under Sakura. She leaned forward and braced herself over Deidara, clutching his face between her hands. “Get up,” she said gravely, gently smooshing his cheeks. “We’re going out.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” he said in groggy confusion, pawing at her wrist.

She patted his face firmly. “ _Get up,_ ” she repeated.

Sakura climbed off him and began toeing through the clothes on the floor. Deidara was an inveterate subscriber to the theory that you could see all your clothes better when they were on the floor, so Sakura pulled out a pair of dark jeans and a tank-top with BANG, BITCHES! written across it without much concern as to whether or not they were clean.

“What --”

The top hit him in the face.

“Okay, okay, I’m getting up, yeah...” he pulled off the oversize shirt he slept in and Sakura turned her face away determinedly. She had used up all her leeway for staring at men she was friends with on Itachi.

Whatever. Deidara did not really seem to wake up properly - unsurprising, since he’d only gone to bed about two hours ago. He stumbled around after her as she pushed and prodded and pulled, and only swiped at her once, lazy and open-handed, when she gave him a little too forceful a shove in encouragement.

“’M sleepy,” he whined when she pushed him toward the door.

“Sorry,” she said, with a damning lack of sincerity.

She had him hustled out the door inside ten minutes.

“It’s _cold_ ,” he whined. “Why is it cold? Why am I outside? Is this revenge for--mph,” he added, when she dumped on oversize jumper over his head - it might have been somebody else’s, now that she looked at it. “That was not friendly, yeah,” he informed her, but he didn’t relinquish the jumper.

Within half an hour they were --

“What the hell kind of cinema is open at half three in the morning?” Deidara asked incredulously, squinting at the neon letters.

“This cinema,” Sakura informed him pointedly. She shoved him toward the door. The bleary-eyed night staff greeted them with wan smiles. The movies playing were a weird mix of artsy and mainstream, the popcorn was a little on the stale side and once Sakura had produced their tickets and man-handled Deidara to cinema three they discovered that they were the only people there.

“ _Sakura-pyon_ ,” he sighed dramatically, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “Can I sleep here? I’m going to sleep here, yeah.”

“Uh-huh,” said Sakura, already smug with anticipation. If he noticed, he didn’t mention it.

Ten minutes later the sound of a Hollywood-level explosion rocked the theatre and Deidara jerked upright. The sudden burst of colour from the screen lit his face with a pale glow, and his eyes reflected the explosion with an unholy light.

“Is this the new _Fire Flight_ movie?” he demanded, suddenly paying attention.

“ _Fire Flight Three: Walking Away_ ,” Sakura agreed, raising an eyebrow challengingly.

He turned to her, all huge blue eyes. “...this is like two hours of basically just explosions, yeah,” he said, sounding simultaneously thrilled and wary.

“And sweaty, half-naked men walking away from explosions,” she corrected, settling comfortably back in her chair. “Popcorn?”

He blinked, once, and then evidently decided that he knew a good thing when it dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night. He took a handful of salty buttered popcorn and shoved it in his mouth.

 

* * *

 

They stumbled out of the cinema just before the sun started getting adventurous in the dawn sky.

“It’s nothing like real explosions, you know,” Deidara said peacefully, not quite looking at Sakura.

“No,” Sakura agreed, having seen more explosions in the past few months than she’d seen ever before. “But I thought you might like it anyway.”

Deidara slanted a glance sideways at her. “Yeah,” he said after an odd pause.

She eyed him. “It wasn’t a date,” she felt the urge to clarify.

“Maa, Sakura-chan, don’t flatter yourself, yeah?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

That was oddly offensive. “ _Hey_." She shoved him with her shoulder, and sent him stumbling into the road. “You should be so lucky.”

There were no cars at this time of morning, but he sent her a baleful look and shoved her right back.

“Who said I’d ever ask you anyway?” She asked, catching herself on a lamp post and sniffing with towering disdain.

Deidara grinned at her and raised his eyebrows, keen and knowing. “Well, I mean, I'm probably the most handsome man you kn--”

She put her palm over his face just to shut him up. “ _No_ ,” she told him, laughing, and yelped when he licked her hand. “Ew, Deidara-kun, gross.”

He licked his lips contemplatively. “Tastes like popcorn, yeah,” he informed her.

She laughed again, tired and a little silly. “You’re a dork.”

He accepted this with equanimity and rolled his shoulders, looking up at the sky as though he could see the encroaching dawn. Not yet, Sakura thought - the sky was lightening in the east, but there was no warmth on the horizon just yet.

“Were you really avoiding me because of the date thing?” Sakura asked finally.

Deidara’s levity faded. “Well, you were pretty angry...”

“Mostly with Hidan,” Sakura said, rubbing her forehead. “And it’s not like me being angry had any impact on him,” she added drily.

“He’s an idiot,” Deidara said, reaching out and swinging around a lamp post with such unexpected force that the pool of light wavered around him. “You seemed like maybe you needed space.” Then he paused. “A lot of space, yeah.”

She snorted softly. “I’m not very good at holding grudges. I think I was pissed off for maybe, like, a few days.”

“I am.”

Sakura blinked.

“Good at holding grudges,” Deidara shrugged. After a second he added: “I’m glad you’re not still mad, though. I really didn’t --”

“I know,” she interrupted. “You don’t have to apolo--”

“Well, _good_ ,” he cut her off loftily, “because I’m not going to apologise, yeah. None of that was my fault.”

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” she muttered, and even though it was loud enough that he must have heard her, Deidara ignored her comment.

They continued in silence for a while. The strip containing the cinema was actually not that far from home - fifteen minutes walking fast, twenty if you were weaving between posts and complaining to one another across an empty footpath - and they’d be back before the sun rose.

Still, both of them were feeling the unpleasant effects of not enough sleep: gritty eyes, sluggish muscles, difficulty concentrating.

“Coming out at three in the morning was dumb, though,” Deidara said, yawning. “I’m still sleepy.”

“Three in the morning was about the only time you weren’t avoiding me,” Sakura pointed out, but his yawn was contagious, and she echoed it.

When they made it home, the only person up was Sasori, who peered at them over a mug of coffee, paused mid-stride in the corridor. He looked at least as tired as they did, with a smudge of grease on his jaw and wearing yesterday’s clothing. He gave them an unreadable look through his heavy-lidded eyes and kept going without comment.

“Now would be a really good time for a huge greasy breakfast,” Sakura said thoughtfully. “But I’d have to cook it,” she added, scrunching up her nose.

“‘S what you get for moving out of home and pretending to be an adult, yeah,” Deidara said sadly, glancing into the kitchen with a similarly forlorn expression. “I’m going back to bed. Maybe, if I can be bothered, I’ll make a frozen pizza later.”

“Bed sounds good,” she agreed, instead of commenting on the strange unpleasantness that was over-sweetened, frozen pizza. Deidara wasn’t a very good cook, and although he could more or less make eggs on toast without hurting anybody (well, not by accident, anyway), Sakura couldn’t begrudge him his gross pre-packaged meals.

Of course, when Sakura made it back up to bed she only got to sleep for about an hour before her phone went off.

“Mnngh?” she said into the receiver.

“Sakura-san?”

Konan. Great. She blinked herself awake. “‘M here,” she said, as coherently as possible.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Sakura-san. We’re a little short-staffed--”

“You need me at the cafe?” Sakura blinked her eyes open.

“No,” said Konan slowly. “I need you to go wait with Hidan.”

“Hi...Hidan-san?” Sakura frowned. She staggered to her feet and into the corridor to discover that Hidan’s door was ajar and his room was empty. “Where is he?”

Konan heaved a sigh. “Orochimaru-sensei arranged for bail and he'll drop him off at the emergency department but-”

“ _What_?” Sakura choked. She scrambled for her pants and pulled on one leg with the phone jammed between her ear and her shoulder.

Konan made a soothing noise. “It didn’t sound too bad, but he has a head injury so he has to get it checked - and he might be a bit difficult with the staff --"

“Oh, _god_ ,” mumbled Sakura, her imagination swimming with visions of what Hidan was capable of. “Where’s Kakuzu?”

“Something about an exam,” said Konan, and then continued calmly: “-- so if you wouldn’t mind just going down to keep an eye on him for a few hours...”

“Yeah, of course,” Sakura agreed, pulling on her second shoe. Dammit, when was she going to learn to undo her shoelaces before kicking her shoes off? “Which ED?”

Konan gave her the name of the hospital and a rough address. “Thank you, Sakura-san,” she said before she hung up.

Sakura made better time to the hospital than she’d thought possible through an embarrassingly direct combination of determination, running and yelling at strangers. She arrived in emergency with a headache, dressed in jeans and sneakers and an oversize sleeping shirt that hung off one shoulder.

Orochimaru-sensei would have been easy to spot even if he hadn’t had a killer grip on Hidan’s hair. It was barely dawn and he was combed and polished and he looked like he’d just rolled off the assembly line - a _very expensive_ assembly line.

He was talking to the triage nurse, who was paying attention to him - but her eyes kept straying to Hidan, who seemed to be trying to get free of Orochimaru-sensei’s hold and attack one of the other patients. There was blood in his blond hair.

“...very confused,” Orochiamu was saying when Sakura approached. The nurse looked like she was internally debating calling security.

“Mother-- fucking -!” there was an odd grunt as Orochimaru twisted his fingers for a better grip, “-- _shove your fucking blessing down your throat and let you choke on it!_ ” Hidan shrieked. He had one hand clutched to his side, but the other was more than capable of taking a swing at some one.

Sakura followed the general direction of his flailing arm to a tiny old man clutching a religious text. Of course.

“Uh, hi,” said Sakura, inching toward them.

Orochimaru glanced at her, and --

“Are you wearing purple eye shadow at eight in the morning?” she blurted stupidly. He was. She could see he was. His makeup was _really well applied_ , too. It was only when she was looking for it that she could see the contouring and - and how had he even gotten a base colour that pale, did he have to go to a goth shop? Did he use... like, cornflour? She boggled.

He looked at her with an expression both irritated and disdainful. “Do you have a problem with that, Sakura-kun?” he inquired with a sweetness that in no way matched his face.

It almost made her want to grasp at her own face. She hadn’t slept and she was half-dressed in her pyjamas and she probably looked a fright, and here was this strange old dude with his pressed suit and his expensive cufflinks and his _ridiculous_ hair and eye makeup.

“No,” she said, feeling like she should _definitely_ have kept her mouth shut. “Just very aware that I look like I just rolled out of bed,” she muttered.

He eyed her as though he wasn’t sure if she was making a joke at his expense, and like he was contemplating crushing her just in case. Which was probably fair enough, she thought, since - well, a guy wearing meticulously-applied makeup, in professional men’s dress, he probably got a lot of weird jokes aimed at him.

“Uh, Konan-san said --”

“Yes, his babysitter,” murmured Orochimaru. He let go of Hidan, and the sudden release of pressure made him stumble. Sakura was colossally unsurprised to see Orochimaru pull out a clean handkerchief and wipe the blood from Hidan’s hair away from his hand.

He dropped it disdainfully upon the nurse’s desk without looking, but Sakura didn’t miss the annoyed expression that crossed the woman’s face.

He looked from her to Hidan and back again. “I wish you the pleasure of him,” he said, and strode out in a swirl of dark hair and completely unnecessary snobbery.

Sakura looked after him for a half-second, then turned her attention back to the woman behind the desk. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “For both of them.”

The nurse gave her a tight, professional smile. “Why don’t you take your friend to sit down?” she suggested pointedly. “It’ll be a few hours.”

Ugh, of course it would.

“Hey,” said Sakura, poking Hidan in the shoulder. “Hey.”

“Sakura?” he blinked dizzily. “Where’s Orochimaru?”

“He left. You’re stuck with me for a while instead.” Hours. She was bored and tired already. She felt like she might kill for one of Pein’s lattes.

“Oh.” A pause. “Well, good. I don’t like that asshole, he’s --”

“An asshole, yeah, I noticed,” Sakura rolled her eyes, tugging gently on his arm. Orochimaru made her feel unreasonably angry and awkward just by showing up. “Come on, come sit down.”

Hidan started and then seemed to remember that he’d been yelling at somebody. Scowling, he turned his head. “That heathen --” he began hotly, but Sakura interrupted him again.

“I saw. You don’t want to spend more time with him than you have to, do you?” she coaxed tiredly. “Come on...” And so Sakura poked, prodded, pushed and persuaded Hidan into one of the relatively uncomfortable chairs of the hospital waiting room.

There was a television program playing in one corner, which was where most of the people in the room had tried to get seats - she picked the opposite corner. Hidan seemed confused and he was easily riled on a good day, so it seemed best to keep him away from normal, sane people.

He was holding his side, but from the way he walked he also had some kind of leg injury. And he was confused, and there was that blood in his hair, so...

When she finally had him sitting, Sakura peered down at his head. “Let me have a look,” she said. Hidan didn’t even scowl at her. He just seemed tired. He was strangely obedient in tipping his head forward.

It was an abrasion, nothing deeper, but head injuries always bled a lot. She sighed and flopped down next to him. “I wish I’d brought a book,” she muttered.

“I wish I’d brought a pick axe,” he responded, and she blinked to see that he was still glowering at the man with the religious book across the waiting room. He appeared to be offering some kind of comfort to a harassed-looking mother with a grey-faced child.

“It wouldn’t be consecrated,” she pointed out without thinking very hard about it.

Hidan blinked. For a second he looked at her like she’d done something terribly surprising. “Guess not,” he said, slowly.

“What happened, anyway?” she asked, hoping to distract him.

“Pickup went badly,” he said with a sigh. “There was a body we were transporting, and --”

“Wait, a body?”

“Yeah... dead bodies, there’s a market for them...” Hidan shrugged. “Fucking weird, if you ask me, but...” he shrugged, and then frowned harder as shrugging jostled something injured.

“A -- for necrophi-- no, you know what, I don’t want to know,” she muttered. “And you were...”

“Cash transfer happens at the same time as the goods, keep everything, you know...”

“Equitable?” Sakura prompted.

“I was gonna say not dodgy, actually,” he said tiredly.

“In which alternative universe is _illegally smuggling a corpse_ not already dodgy?” she hissed. She was very aware that they were technically in public, and although nobody was close enough to hear them Sakura couldn’t help but lower her voice.

Hidan waved this comment off. “They didn’t want to pay. Got messy.”

Right. They didn’t want to _pay_ for their illegally-gotten dead body. Sure. Okay. How was this Sakura’s life again?

Then Hidan grinned at her and leaned closer. She thought he was going to say something that was best not mentioned in public, so she let him get close enough that he probably could have licked her. She could feel the warm rush of his breath down her neck.

“ _But you should totally see the other guys_ ,” he whispered. His mouth rubbed against the shell of her ear.

Oh, for --

Sakura jerked her face away and kicked him in the shin of his uninjured leg. “Oh my _god_ ,” she muttered. "You are unbelievable."

The hospital wait was long and surprisingly uneventful, despite Hidan’s occasional urges to pick completely unnecessary fights.

Once Sakura was there, he had her to entertain himself with anyway. He spent a good half-hour explaining the myriad ways in which he was in pain and why all of those were valuable and important, and Sakura nodded along and tried not to actually pay much more attention to him than necessary.

“The relative value of head injuries is kind of a matter of doctrinal dispute for us,” he explained, and Sakura blinked hazily, exhausted but humouring him. He was injured, they had to pass the time, and by god she might never pick up the phone to Konan again.

“Okay,” said Sakura slowly. “Why?”

“There’s a lot of stuff about memory loss, like, all that bullshit with trauma and memory? If you don’t remember being tortured were you actually tortured? People who weren’t tortured also don’t remember being tortured. That sort of thing. Since head injuries induce memory loss, some guys figure it doesn’t meet the psychological criteria for suffering.”

“That’s stupid,” Sakura said with a sniff.

Hidan gave her a narrow-eyed look. “Why?” he challenged.

“If you’re forced to repress - or suppress, or whatever - a whole bunch of memories because you’re too traumatised to function when you remember them, that is basically the definition of psychological harm, that’s --” Sakura stopped abruptly.

“No,” she said after a second, giving him a very direct look.

Hidan scowled. “No _what_?” he snapped.

“No, you’re not going to trick me into arguing about - about _Jashinist theology_ with you!”

“What-the-fuck-ever,” Hidan growled, looking put out. “I’m too tired for this shit.”

He was too tired? _He_ was too tired? For a second she wanted to slap him, but then she remembered that he was still injured and, also, he’d probably hit her back.

“ _Good_ ,” she said instead, ignoring how this made Hidan roll his eyes.

<From: Kakuzu  
Timestamp: 10:42 AM  
Message body: Exam over. I’ll pick you up. ETA 11:30. >

Huh. Sakura squinted at her screen and wondered if Kakuzu’s phone had been stolen by some strange, much nicer person. Still, she wasn’t about to turn down a ride home.

<To: Kakuzu  
Timestamp: 10:45 AM  
Message body: Take your time, we’re still waiting.>

It was completely unsurprising to Sakura that after about five minutes of - apparently unbearable - silence, Hidan began to murmur prayers to himself. His voice was low and measured, and the sounds of the words were oddly calming because the rise and fall of intonation mostly matched her breathing.

Sakura, exhausted from her wild night of watching hollywood explosions with Deidara, ended up asleep with her face mashed into Hidan’s shoulder. He tried to shove her away and complained about the drooling at first, but eventually it turned out that he twas too tired to care that much either.

“You’re an idiot,” he said to her, breaking away from his prayer at one point.

Sakura grunted and shifted her weight, jamming her cheekbone into the bony part of his shoulder. “Don’t care. Shut up,” she mumbled.

When he started to pray again, it was louder.

When they were finally called into the small clinic where minor breaks and sutures were looked at, Sakura went too - less for Hidan’s comfort and more so she could act as a buffer between him and the staff as necessary. She leaned against the far wall with her arms wrapped around her and heavy, sleepy eyes.

Hidan did have an argument with the young doctor who was supposed to suture his wound. The possibility that accepting local anaesthetic was against a person’s religion seemed to stun the man, and he made a valiant attempt to convince Hidan that it would make the stitches much easier to take.

“The needle is going to go through your flesh,” he pointed out. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want...”

“Positive,” Hidan growled.

The doctor looked uneasily toward the nurse, who was significantly older and a lot wearier looking. She shrugged one shoulder, utterly unconcerned.

“I... he has a head injury,” the doctor said, side-eyeing Hidan. “Is he capable of --?"

“I don’t want your fucking anaesthetic!" Hidan roared.

Sakura was moving before she was even aware of it, and she caught Hidan‘s arm by the wrist when he swung. He was stronger than she‘d been expecting, and his punch kept travelling until it was an inch from the doctor‘s chin.

Hidan gave her a look that was absolutely gutted. “They won’t, they --” his voice trailed off into something inarticulate.

He was angry for sure, but there was something strangely vulnerable and upset under that rage.

If he kept on in this way he was likely to end up sedated. And also in a remand cell, honestly. Konan probably asked her here to avoid that specific problem. She took a deep breath.

“I’m his next of kin,” Sakura lied blithely to the doctor, who still seemed shocked that his teeth were all still inside his mouth. “He doesn’t need the local, it’s a very stringent requirement of his religion. You’ll just make him crazier,” she added with a dark look at Hidan.

He stilled, finally, blinking blearily at her with his strange pinkish eyes. She loosened her grip on his arm, paused to see if he’d take advantage, and then let go all the way.

The doctor looked very much as though he thought they were both nuts, but he clenched his jaw against whatever was likely to come out of his mouth. “Sure,” he said in a very tight voice.

Sakura turned to Hidan with hard eyes. “Get on the bed," she said flatly, in a tone she'd borrowed from Tsunade-sama.

He blinked again, once.

Then he complied.

He settled onto the weird hospital sheets and let them peel away clothing and clean his wounds and sew him up.

Hidan was astonishingly quiet while he was stitched up. Sakura doubted he was enjoying the bright lights or the strangers’ hands on his skin, but he did get really invested in the pain thing. His eyes were focused on something far distant, and the only sign that he was feeling it at all was the occasional catch in his breath.

When the doctor finally let them go, it was with instructions to keep an eye on his head injury, change his bandages, and make a new appointment to remove the stitches at a later date. He addressed all this information directly to Sakura and only looked at Hidan inasmuch as he shot him uncertain, wary looks.

It was almost midday when the hospital administration finally spat them out onto the street, and although it was sunny the wind was cold. Sakura rubbed her eyes wearily.

“Do you think you can wait five minutes for Kakuzu without hitting anybody?” she wondered. Hidan actually looked pretty okay, in the scheme of things - heavy-lidded eyes and strangely loose limbs.

Sakura did not want to contemplate whether or not that was the effect of unanaesthetised wound-stitching, because it looked a little too much like afterglow.

“I’m tired,” Hidan muttered, leaning heavily against the side of the building. Sakura took that as a 'yes’ and together they settled in to wait for their ride.

 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is 97% characters bitching at one another

Kakuzu picked them up before Hidan could manage to pick a fight with anybody new. The car wasn't any better maintained, but Kakuzu was at the very least a more... self-preserving... driver than Deidara.

Not, of course, that this was a very high standard. Deidara had all the self-preservation instincts of a stoned lemming.

She thought he might actually be worse than Naruto, and she didn't make the comparison lightly.

Sakura was exhausted - she didn't regret dragging Deidara out the previous night, precisely - it had to be done, after all, or he might have avoided her forever, and it certainly hadn't been a chore - but she wasn't exactly thrilled to have been woken up for Hidan's sake, either. The emergency department kind of sucked the life out of her. She felt drained.

Presently, Hidan was dozing in the back seat - presumably the result of having been up half the night himself, combined with the excitement at the emergency room and his panic when the doctors didn't seem like they were going to listen to him - which meant he was actually kind of... silent. For once.

The trip was quiet enough that she could hear the mechanics of the car, from the soft grind of the wheels on the road to the rumble of the engine. She... didn't like it. It made her feel strange and slightly queasy, and set her heart rate to fluttering higher and higher.

Cars held a different significance now. She didn't think Kakuzu would hurt her, but she didn't explicitly trust him either - and so Sakura did catch herself anxiously contemplating how fast they were going, in case she needed to...

Well, to jump out. That was stupid, she knew, but worries like that were often stupid. She did her best to ignore it, but her eyes still drifted to the road, anxiously contemplating whether or not she could do it.

She rubbed her forehead and let her fingers drift into her hair, keeping her eyes closed for a few long seconds. They burned a little when she closed them. Also her hair was gross and greasy, because it was exam time on top of everything and she hadn't washed it recently. Ew.

"Ne," she said into the silence, feeling tense and cranky and tired, "about Orochimaru-sensei..."

Kakuzu grunted.

"Is he..?" She struggled for a second, trying to come up with the right word to explain Orochimaru. She wasn't sure if there  _was_  a word. "Is he like that... on purpose?"

"I don't know," Kakuzu said, and she had the feeling that this was the common answer to many, many questions about Orochimaru. "You could ask him," he suggested.

Sakura squinted over at him, wondering if he was being facetious.

Hidan made a derisive noise in the back.

Sakura sighed, tipping her head back against her headrest, and closed her eyes. "I thought you were sleeping," she said to Hidan, ignoring the exhausted burn of the darkness behind her eyelids.

"You're too noisy to sleep," he said, which was so incredibly hypocritical she wondered if it would be bad form to put him  _right back in the hospital_ just on principle. It would be fine as long as she didn't hit him in the head again, right?

Hmm.

In the end it hardly mattered, because despite the grating drone of his voice as he annoyed Kakuzu, Sakura fell asleep in the car.

Kakuzu's hand on her shoulder was the next thing she knew.

"Nyeh?" she mumbled, blinking around, and realised she was home. "Oh. Thanks for the lift," she muttered. She stumbled tiredly inside, contemplated the many stairs between the ground floor and her second-floor bedroom and decided to crash on the couch instead. It was only a few steps away, quiet and unoccupied so - decision made.

She slung herself down upon it and -

Let out the kind of bellow best attributed to a wounded rhinoceros, because she'd somehow ended up sitting on a pile of half-decayed fur and...  _wires_..?

Sakura landed on her tailbone on the floor - ow! - and sprang quickly to her feet because the fur  _moved_. There was a hideous mechanical whine and a - it was a head, she thought, although the creature had wires and bits of plastic and metal dangling from its face, like...

The head turned.

It was a cat.

Worse, it was definitely a real, once-live cat, except somebody had killed it and ripped out its insides and replaced them with  _god only knew what_.

"Meee-ow," said the cat, tilting its hideous head at her, and that was the creepiest goddamn thing she'd ever seen in her life.

Sakura let out a whimper. "Nooo," she managed. "No, no, no."

She reached sideways, wrapped her hand around the nearest heavy object and c _lobbered it with an end table._

It didn't even seem to  _notice_. The monster thing kept moving, so she hit it again. Like some demented demon, it tumbled from the couch and tried to get away, and now she could see where there was a hole in its belly and she could smell a mix of decay and formaldehyde and see - was that a motherboard?  _Was there a motherboard in that cat?_

She heaved the table again, and this time it abruptly got a lot heavier as she made to swing it again.

"Ah, you found him," said Sasori's quiet voice behind her.

The table had gotten heavier because he was holding onto it. He tried to tug the end table away from her but Sakura did not let go. Her arm trembled and she stared at him, wide-eyed, and then she looked back at the... thing.

She needed it to defend herself against that monstrous cat ...thing.

He tugged again.

"Sakura-san," he said flatly. "Please don't break him."

"That's..." A  _him_? She eyed the Frankensteinian cat beast for a few increasingly disturbing seconds. She was fairly certain there was some kind of coolant where the digestive system used to go. "Did you pull the insides out of somebody's pet  _cat_?" she asked.

"He wasn't a pet," Sasori informed her, clearly missing the actual problem with his terrifying, cat-murdering ways. "He's an old design, but I wanted to test the navigation."

"It's a  _dead cat_ ," she pointed out. "You want to test the navigation on a  _dead cat_."

Sasori blinked once, slowly, at the cat, and then back at her. "Put the table down, Sakura-san," he said firmly and not very patiently.

Her fingers curled around it harder. "No," she said. "I need -"

"No. Let go of the table," he repeated.

Sakura felt the sudden urge to rip it free and hit  _him_  with it. Who murdered cats and let their fluffy corpses roam freely as undead cyborg monsters?

"What is  _wrong_  with you?" she snarled. "Seriously, what the  _hell_?"

"Meeee-" said the cat. It cut off halfway through its ugly robotic vocalisation.

Sakura's hand, the one holding the table, clenched. Sasori clutched it harder. Something flinty and mean uncoiled behind his placid gaze.

"Sakura-san," he warned.

Sakura ignored the little voice in her head telling her she could totally take him on. It sounded a lot like Hidan, which was never a good thing. Why was her internal monologue starting to sound like Hidan? That was so alarming.

Sakura unclenched her fingers. Slowly, she let go of the table.

"-ow," the cat finished. She twitched a little.

"He's old," Sasori said defensively, picking his way gracefully around her and scooping up the cat. He held it like a real pet. Something sparked in its stomach.

"I can't even begin to explain how much that isn't -"

Sakura's fairly direct criticism was interrupted by a shriek and a bellow and a crash, and somebody screaming at the top of his lungs about shampoo.

"Deidara," sighed Sasori. "He's so noisy." He sounded cranky.

Sakura very carefully didn't say that you didn't have to be noisy to be  _weird as fuck_ , but from her dubious expression she suspected that Sasori caught on anyway. He gave her an unreadable glance and took himself, and his...  _pet project_ , back to his... well, traditionally Sakura might have called it his bedroom, but today she was going with 'his lair'.

To: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 1:15 PM  
Message body: Did you know Sasori murders cats and turns them into creepy android monsters?

From: Uchiha Itachi  
Timestamp: 1:16 PM  
Message body: Yes. Ongoing project. Sources them from animal control officers. They have been put down humanely.

Sakura supposed that sourcing his dead cats from animal control was, more or less, a good thing. But she couldn't help the feeling that Itachi had really missed the actual issue here, which was that there were poorly preserved dead cats walking around her house to "test the navigation." And wasn't that a phrase that actually created many, many more questions than it answered?

Why would anybody need, or even want, a self-navigating dead cat?

There was an enraged bellow from upstairs and another crash. It was probably just Hidan and Deid-

Sakura blinked.

She shot to her feet.

"DEIDARA," she bellowed at the top of her lungs, and hit the stairs at a sprint, "STOP, STOP, STOP!" Her voice cracked on the last syllable and she made it to the first floor landing at a flying speed, then hurled herself up the next flight of stairs.

She scrambled to the top floor and found that the door to the bathroom on that corridor was open, expelling a mess of steam and revealing a pile of discarded towels on the floor, and there was a trail of damp foot prints between where the door had been slammed open and where Hidan and Deidara were frozen on the floor.

Did nobody in this house wear clothing? Sakura wondered. She really did. Not that Deidara wasn't lovely to look at, but -

She yanked her eyes back up to his face and focused on the main point, which was that he was trying to choke Hidan on the floor and, given the general state of Hidan, appeared to be dong a  _mighty fine job_.

"No, no, stop, Deidara - he's. Head injury," Sakura said between breaths, clutching at the wall. Wow, running of a morning did not prepare her for running  _up stairs._ How unfair.

Deidara's expression didn't change. "Yeah?" he said, totally indifferent. He wasn't releasing Hidan, and Hidan was kind of confusedly clawing at him.

"I am not spending any more of my time in the emergency room," she said plaintively, taking two steps forward. She saw the wary, assessing look cross Deidara's face at her approach. "I had to talk to  _Orochimaru_ ," she added. "It was terrifying."

Deidara's nose wrinkled. "Ugh."

"Let go of his neck," she coaxed.

With a heaved, put upon sigh, Deidara did.

"I'm sure this problem can be solved without unnecessary violence," Sakura said coaxingly, which was, in hindsight, a terrible falsehood and also colossally overestimating her housemates' social skills.

It took less than a second for Hidan, dazed and exhausted as he was, to realise he was free, hook one leg around Deidara's and flip him, slamming his shoulders against the floor.

"Fuck - your - fucking - shampoo," he told him seriously, ramming Deidara's head into floorboards with a thudding, percussive noise, giving each word equal weight in violence.

Deidara yowled like a wet cat.

Also, he was still naked.

Why? Thought Sakura. Why this?

She fought off the urge to cover her face and moan sadly at the state of her existence. Instead she contemplated the fastest way to stop either of them murdering one another - not usually her problem, but she really  _didn't_ want to go back to the ED for Hidan's head.

Sakura found herself eyeing Hidan. She was tired, but he was injured and drowsy and -

She squinted.

She could probably...

Yeah, she could totally take him.

Sakura took a couple quit steps forward, picked her way delicately around the flailing wet limbs and shrieking while the two were distracted, and grabbed Hidan by the hair. She got a good handful, because she didn't want to rip it  _out_ , she just wanted to - well, you know, long hair made a good handle.

She saw him pause in confusion when she touched him, and then saw him wrinkle his forehead, blink, and go back to smacking Deidara's head into the floor.

Sakura swore and used her hold to haul him away from Deidara. Dragging him by his hair proved to be significantly harder than it had seemed when she contemplated it, primarily because Hidan growled something that was mostly incoherent and tried to punch her in the stomach.

"Oh, for god's sakes," she snarled, and then she drew her foot back and kicked his injured leg.

He howled.

" _Good_ ," she said in response to his evident pain.

She took the opportunity to pull him away, down the corridor toward his room. He was heavy and she got worried about his hair so she hooked her hand in his collar as well. He gagged and she threw all her strength into puling him along. Behind them, Deidara was cursing.

Sakura dumped him inside his doorway, where he slumped for a second and rubbed his throat. Even after all her efforts, Deidara had still probably done him a lot more harm.

"I am not," she informed him, ducking quickly out of the way of his pissed off retaliatory swipe (her lessons with Kakashi-sensei were brutal, but they were paying off), "going to sit with you at the ER again today. None of this," she waved vaguely down the corridor to where Deidara was rubbing his head and stumbling to his feet in a puddle of water, "until I know your head's fine."

She paused.

"Or as fine as it ever is."

Hidan glowered up at her. He looked weirdly vulnerable with his hand on his neck and the huge dark bruises around his eyes. "Bitch, you can't tell me -"

Sakura leaned down and grabbed on his hair again, pulling his face toward hers. She could feel his breath on her chin.

"No," she said in a dire voice, making serious eye contact. "Right now? You're injured and you're exhausted and your head is probably killing you." She got right in his face and hissed: " _I can take you_."

He made a tiny noise in the back of his throat and looked up at her with huge, blown pupils. "Uh," he said.

Something deep in Sakura's belly curled up and purred in heady satisfaction.

It took a second of staring at her before he said anything. She didn't let him go, because she had no idea what would happen if she did. Maybe he'd sit there, maybe he'd take a swing at her - from that position he had enough space to make a punch really hurt.

"Hey," he said in a strangely calm voice.

"What," she said flatly.

"You wanna make out?"

Sakura blinked.

And then she blinked again.

Annnd one more time.

Well, nobody could accuse him of being indirect.

"Oh my god, go to  _bed_ , Hidan," she said, rolled her eyes and let him go. He slumped toward the floor. Sakura turned on her heel and stalked off down the corridor. She flexed her fingers against the lingering feeling of his hair.

"Hey! So - was that a no?" he called after her after a second.

She didn't answer, and in not answering she felt... oddly bold.

* * *

Sakura napped in bed for two hours before academic guilt got the better of her. It was, technically speaking, still mid-semester exam time. She couldn't afford to slack off, not really.

Kakuzu knocked perfunctorily on her door in the mid-afternoon, waving a letter in her direction. "Bill," he explained shortly.

Sakura looked up from her notes on the physiological mechanisms of glucose regulation. She took the paper and checked his arithmetic by force of habit, but it was pretty much always right. "Is the water bill always this high?" she wondered, squinting.

"You can blame Hidan for taking forty minute showers twice a day," Kakuzu said shortly.

"Right," Sakura muttered. It was probably right, anyway. She wrote down the number so she'd remember how much she owed. "Thanks."

He grunted. "I'm going to a conference next week. I don't expect to receive any bills, but in case we do, you'll probably need to sort them out." His eyes bored into hers for a few deeply unpleasant seconds.

"A conference?" Sakura repeated curiously.

"The International Conference on Economics and Finance Research," he said.

"Huh," said Sakura, because she had nothing else to say. That sounded like the most agonizingly boring conference she'd ever even heard of. "That's... good?"

He eyed her. "I'm presenting."

"Oh! Congratulations," she paused. "Is that a thing you congratulate somebody for?"

"I don't know." Here he paused, too. "But it's cheaper if you're presenting," he added, almost grudgingly.

"Great," said Sakura. "Wait, so, you're gone all week?"

"Fortnight," he said. "I'll be out of contact. You'll need to look after bills, maintenance requests -"

"Wait, wait, wait," said Sakura. "Why do  _I_  need to look after that stuff? I mean, there's three other people here."

Kakuzu stared at her for a long second. It was a weird expression, like he thought he could get her to stop being stupid if he stared hard enough for long enough.

"Er, Kakuzu-san?" she prompted after what felt like it had to be nearly a full, staring minute. "It's just, I'm the youngest, and I've only recently moved in. It seems like one of the others might be better?"

Well, by 'one of the others' she really meant... Sasori, probably. She was sure, if pressed, that Hidan could manage paying his own bills and rent like an adult. She... er, she had her doubts about Deidara, though. Organisation was not his strong point.

"As I said," said Kakuzu slowly, "there shouldn't be anything coming up, except getting the others to pay their rent on time. But if there is, Sasori rarely knows what day it is."

"Oh," said Sakura. He did tend to wander around mainlining caffeine and staring at people and disappear into his lair for days on end. "Right."

"If you can't do it, I'll tell Hidan to," Kakuzu offered.

Sakura thought of Hidan and his head injury and his casual come-on and how he'd probably dismember whoever didn't pay their rent on time - god knows, that was probably what had happened to poor Gekkou-san. "Yeah, no," she said, waving one hand. "I guess if it comes down to it, I can call and ask Itachi to stab somebody again," she muttered.

She wasn't entirely sure if she was joking.

The possibility that it was a joke didn't seem to have even entered into the conversation for Kakuzu. "Don't forget," he said shortly.

"I won't," she agreed. "Don't worry about it."

He didn't respond or say goodbye; he just turned and headed back down the corridor.

"But check on Hidan, would you?" she asked before he'd gotten too far. He didn't turn but she saw him pause. "Just to, er, make sure he can still wake up."

He grunted sourly, then changed direction.

Sakura kicked her door closed, returned to her notes, and steadfastly ignored the sudden yelp and subsequent argument from the other end of the corridor. She still had her last mid-semester exam on Tuesday, but between her efficient handling of Sasori's dead cat with the navigation problem and Hidan's early morning emergency department visit, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was getting the hang of living in a madhouse.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura has another run in with Sasori's pet project, certain people go curiously missing and Tobi is a dork (but that's better than when he's _not_ a dork).

 

Sakura's assessment that she was getting used to living in a madhouse turned out to be hilariously incorrect in hindsight.

The week was a horror.

Monday began with Tenten waking her to go running - by climbing through her window, obviously.

Sakura really was trying to convince people to stop bothering Zetsu by making noise on the balcony at five in the morning, so when she'd staggered into a pair of leggings and a sports bra, she hustled Tenten out her bedroom door and into the silent corridor.

"What," said Tenten, with an expression of horror, "is that?"

Sakura heaved a huge sigh and turned to examine her door, which, sure enough, had a triangle trapped in a circle painted upon it in blood. She had no idea when Hidan had gotten up but the blood was fresh enough that the bigger drips were still tacky when she touched them.

"Hidan," said Sakura. Tenten's expression of horror did not abate. "I'll clean it later, come on."

She did not mention that by 'later' she meant  _much_  later. Hidan's sensibilities would no doubt be offended if she rejected his blessing. Even if it was super, super unhygienic.

"Yes," said Tenten, looking over her shoulder as Sakura steered her toward the stairs, "but what IS it?"

"It's some religious thing, don't worry about it," Sakura said, prodding a little harder.

Tenten looked dubious. "Is Hidan-san part of a cult?"

 _Yes_ , thought Sakura. "It's a very old religion," she said instead. "Lots of, um, historical value -"

"Is this why I haven't met most of your housemates?" Tenten asked sharply, and probably too loudly, as they reached the ground floor. "Are they all in the same cult?"

There was a dull thump from inside Sasori's lair, and a hideously mechanical meowing noise.

Tenten turned her gaze in that direction, eyes widening. "What-?"

"Oh look! There's the door. I can't wait for wholesome exercise!" Sakura said loudly, taking a firm grip on Tenten's shoulders and shoving her toward the door.

Tenten did not seem very happy about it, but she let their conversation drop and allowed herself to be steered out into the pre-dawn darkness.

Sakura couldn't be sure if it was just out of spite, but Tenten set a brutal pace for their run, and by the time they got back Sakura was gasping.

"Not bad," Tenten informed her, checking her watch. "Three intervals of twenty minutes is good."

Sakura swore at her between breaths, which just made Tenten grin.

"Yeah, you know what?" she said three minutes later, while Sakura was stretching her legs. "I think you'll be all right to try two intervals of thirty next time."

Sakura swiped half-heartedly at her, but Tenten was too fast.

Kakuzu had left for his conference by the time Sakura made it back inside, and the house was silent. Deidara and Hidan both slept late when they could and only the strong smell of terrible instant coffee hinted that Sasori was about.

"Meeee Owww," said a voice from somewhere around Sakura's ankles.

She looked down at Sasori's dead cat.

He'd fixed it up since she beat it with a table, but Sakura was no closer to figuring out what the hell its  _purpose_  was.

It rubbed against her leg and she cringed a little. It had none of the firm give of muscle beneath its fur and skin - just cold metal.

"Er," she said, peering down at it. "Can you," she paused again. "Go away?"

It stared up at her with glass eyes and meowed.

Unfortunately, it seemed to know she was talking to it, so when she said, "Okay," very slowly and edged around it - the cat followed.

"Me. Ow," it told her.

"Oh my god," Sakura muttered, jogging to the kitchen to get away from the hideous thing.

The cat broke into a jerky trot and  _followed her_.

Okay, Sakura thought. The dead cat was following her. That was the creepiest thing that had happened to her in the history of ever and she was  _including_ Sai's stupid face in that list.

It was harmless though. She knew that intellectually. It was weird, but -

It was just a dead animal.

Yes. Okay.

Heart beating heavily, Sakura swallowed, walked calmly to the sink and got herself a cup of water because she'd been running and hydration was-

"Me. Ow."

No. No.  _Nope_.

Sakura's nerve broke completely.

" _SASORI!_ " she shrieked, from her brand new perch on top of the kitchen table, clutching her mug. "SASORI! Come and get it  _away_  from me! Oh my  _god_."

It was actually Deidara who stumbled into the kitchen, squinting at her and - "Are you standing on... Are you scared of Sasori-sempai's cat?"

Sakura felt like she might, maybe, just a little, be on the verge of bursting into tears. "Make it go  _away_ ," she said, and her voice sounded high and shaky and aggrieved even to her.

Deidara started laughing. He did not stop. She threw a discarded biro cap at him, which was the only thing on the table in her reach. She did not get off the table.

"Me. Ow," said the cat. It jumped onto a chair. Something mechanical under its decaying fur hissed quietly.

" ** _SASORI!_** " Sakura wailed.

Deidara slid down the wall and to the floor, still laughing uproariously. "Oh my god," he said, trying to breathe.

"Sakura-san," Sasori said, appearing in the doorway. He eyed Deidara like he was something on the bottom of his shoe.

Deidara reached over and clutched at his knee and kept giggling. "Sasori-sempai," he said between breaths. "She's - she's -  _scared_  -" he broke down into laughter. "She  _climbed onto the table_ -"

Sasori jerked his leg away from Deidara's clutches, took several steps away from him and turned back to Sakura. "What?" he said flatly.

"If you don't get that fucking thing away from me I will  _beat it to a pulp_ , Sasori-san," Sakura said, wild-eyed and tense, as the cat stared up at her, unblinking and still.

"As I said," Sasori murmured warily, "I am merely testing the navigation. Emmo," he added.

The dead cat thing turned its head toward him and  _oh god_  it could turn its head more than a hundred and eighty degrees, oh  _gross_.

"Come," Sasori commanded, and it dropped from the chair with a heavy  _thunk_  and followed Sasori out of the room.

Sakura's knees gave out and she sunk down to the table top. She was actually trembling, for reasons that escaped her entirely.

"What the hell kind of a name is Emmo, anyway," she muttered, running her hands through her hair. The sweat from her run was cooling and her hair was strangely damp.

"It's not Emmo," Deidara said. He hadn't moved from where he was slumped against the wall and he was still smiling widely. "It's M. O., the initials."

"What, like modus opera - oh, god, what does it even matter. That thing is disgusting."

"No, like _Me Ow_ , yeah," Deidara grinned. "And Sasori-sempai's been working on the project for kind of a while," he added.

"The project," Sakura muttered darkly. The project which was apparently  _programming navigation into a dead cat_  somehow.

"Sure," Deidara agreed. "I'm not sure I'd call it  _art_ ," he added, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of Sasori's lair. "But it's definitely been a project for a while."

"Okay, well, that's insane," Sakura said, the same way a lesser woman might have said, 'okay, well, it's raining right now.' "I probably should have expected that he was working on something gross and ridiculous all this time."

"Pretty much," said Deidara, getting to his feet. "Tea?" he asked, reaching for the kettle.

"Nah," Sakura stretched her legs and carefully put her toes back onto the floor. Her legs held her up now. "I have to go in to TRIVIA soon, I'll get a coffee or something there." And, looking at the clock, she realised she had to get dressed properly if she was going to make it to the bus stop in time to reach the cafe for her shift... and she was still wearing a sweaty tee shirt and ratty leggings.

Sakura swore, poked her head outside the kitchen door to make sure the cat wasn't out there waiting for her, and then dashed off to have a quick shower before heading in.

Next on the list of things that were strange or horrible that week was TRIVIA. The situation at the cafe seemed more concerning than any awkward conversation with Tenten or any of Sasori's more... eccentric pet projects.

When Sakura arrived, the place was dark and silent, locked and chained from the outside.

She frowned. As far as she knew, Pein should have been there, setting up. And inconveniently, Sakura did not have a key - she'd returned it after Pein's illness and hadn't gotten another cut - she didn't  _need_  one, anyway, since she was almost never the first or last person there.

She checked her messages and found that Naruto had sent her a slightly blurry phone photograph of Sasuke fast asleep with Naruto's empty cup ramen perched jauntily on top of his glossy black hair, under the filename 'bastardface.jpg'.

Which was...

Well, it was cute.

But it wasn't helping her with figuring out what the hell was going on at TRIVIA, was it?

Sakura's concern only grew as she found that neither Konan nor Pein was answering their phone. Hell, Pein's didn't even go through to voice mail - it just reported that the phone was somewhere outside a service area.

Even Jiraiya, she discovered, had apparently dropped off the face of the planet at the same time. Without telling anybody.

Sakura frowned. Surely Deidara or Sasori would have told her if they knew anything like this. Hidan - well, she wasn't sure. The last time she'd seen him he'd been staring at her with glazed eyes and asking if they could make out.

(Sakura was not thinking about that one. Nope. Nuh-uh.)

Feeling very awkward, she called Zetsu.

"Zetsu-san," she said when his phone went through to the message bank, "I'm just trying to figure out where Konan or - anybody, actually, who has a key to TRIVIA, might be. Do-"

There was a click. "Sakura-san," his voice was soft but oddly hoarse. "Have you tried Jiraiya?"

"He's not answering. None of them are. Pein's phone won't even ring." And if she sounded worried, well, who could blame her? So many things, from Black Ops to the police to an emergency hospitalisation - anything seemed plausible, given her life at the moment.

Zetsu made a noise that sounded more considering than worried. "Perhaps something sensitive has come up," he suggested, and then: "They were rude not to tell you. We should cut their eyes out and put them on toast."

"Er," said Sakura, and then she just decided not to comment on that. "So you don't know anything?"

He didn't, and Sakura hung up after assuring him that there were others she could call for information.

Itachi was obviously asleep when she called him - and she felt bad, because she should probably have more consideration for his sleep schedule, since his last exam was that day, if she recalled correctly - and he made a weary but puzzled noise into the receiver.

"What? No, I don't..." He trailed off uncertainly, voice thick with sleep. "I haven't heard anything?" A pause. "Kisame, have you -"

"It's early," rumbled Kisame's voice. "Tell her to go back to bed."

"I'm sorry for waking you," she said apologetically. They must have been curled very closely together for Kisame's voice to be so clear and textured, which-

Sakura expected to feel jealous, maybe a little uncomfortable, but instead the mental image this evoked somehow pushed every last one of her adorable buttons, very nearly the same way that adorable cat photos on the internet did.

Odd.

"Sakura," said Itachi then, "perhaps -" but then the phone was taken from him.

"Nope," Sakura heard Kisame say, and the conversation was cut off in a low beep, over the sleepy half-hearted sounds of Itachi's protests.

Right.

She contemplated calling somebody else, but she'd exhausted the numbers saved to her phone. After a few nervous seconds she looked up Tsunade's office number on the internal university directory.

"Um, hello, Tsunade-sama," she said to the answerphone. "I'm Haruno, I'm one of your students. I'm trying to contact Jiraiya-san but-"

There was a click, and then Tsunade's voice: "Hello? Haruno Sakura, right?"

"Ah, yes," Sakura said, swallowing. She hadn't actually anticipated Tsunade being in her office this early, but as a doctor and as a teacher Senjuu Tsunade did have a reputation for being very hard working.

"Jiraiya's not - actually pretty sure he's not in town right now," she said thoughtfully. "Why do you need to contact him?"

Sakura sighed. "I work at a cafe he owns, T-"

"TRIVIA, yes. Can't find Konan or Yahi- er, he goes by Pein now, doesn't he? Are they not available?"

"No," said Sakura, deciding not to even ask what 'Yahi-' might have ended in. She peered awkwardly into darkened cafe through a tiny gap in the metal sheeting. "And I gave my key back after Pein-san got better. There's no way to contact Jiraiya-san?"

Tsunade grunted. "I'm sure Orochimaru has a key, I can-"

Sakura must have made a noise, because Tsunade paused.

"You've met Orochimaru, I see," she drawled.

"Er," she said. She cleared her throat. "I... I'm sure he's great once you get to know him?" She said weakly.

"No," said Tsunade, "Not really."

"...oh."

"Ten to one he has a spare key, though, so I can get him to go over there-"

"No!" said Sakura, much, much too quickly. "I don't - I'm sure there's someone else I could... Uh, thank you for your time?"

Tsunade, happily, seemed more amused than offended. "Yeah, he has that effect on people," she snorted. "Let me give you his number anyway, in case 'someone else' doesn't show."

Reluctantly, Sakura copied down the number with which Tsunade provided her and resolved to lose it at the earliest opportunity.

There was one other option. Sakura wasn't sure if she liked it, but it just  _couldn't_  be worse than Orochimaru.

Madara actually picked up his own phone. "Unless you're bleeding, dying or literally on fire," he said in a dull, sleepy growl, "I'm hanging up."

"Do you have a key to TRIVIA?" Sakura blurted.

There was a long pause. Madara made a really annoyed noise. "They didn't -? No, of course not. Idiots, all of them. I'll be there in fifteen."

There was a crash and a yelp that made Sakura flinch from the phone and then distantly she heard: "It's okay! Tobi is okay!"

"Not for long," murmured Madara pleasantly.

"There was a small fire, but Tobi put it out," she heard in the background.

"Um," said Sakura.

"Make it twenty," Madara said to her.

"...Right," she said.

Madara hung up without saying goodbye.

Sakura settled to lean against the rolling metal door of TRIVIA's entry, ignoring the puzzled glances of the few people walking by at that time of day. After a few bored moments she flicked her phone's screen on again and spent a while doing nothing productive on social media sites. It was soothing, in its way, and it certainly made her worry less about Jiraiya, Konan and Pein.

She had just set the ramen cup photograph as Sasuke's new contact picture when the ostentatious van rolled up. Sakura always had the sensation that the intricate, black and white patterned wheels painted on it were just a moment away from giving her a terrible headache.

Madara stepped out, polished shoes clicking, all wild hair and long limbs and glinting eyes. If Sakura hadn't heard him waking up on the phone, she'd never have thought he'd been in any kind of a rush.

It didn't matter that he was standing outside in the early morning sun instead of hovering around looking creepy after dark - he was still, somehow, frightening. The fact that Sakura's forebrain couldn't tell her why Uchiha Madara made all her instincts curl up and whimper might actually have made it worse.

Around the other side, the van door slid back with a grating noise and sort of  _expelled_  Tobi, who yelled her name and lunged for her.

Sakura's endless hours of practice with Kakashi-sensei kicked in and she sidestepped him without even really thinking about it.

She actually sort of expected him to go careening past her and smack himself into TRIVIA's rolling metal door, but he changed direction rather gracefully just to swoop down and scoop her up. Sakura yelped and dropped everything while she was flailing her arms. "To- Tobi-san! Put me  _down_!"

"Sakura-chan~" he crowed, apparently unconcerned by her protests. He spun around wildly, leaving her much dizzier than Sakura really wanted to be. "Tobi is here to help Sakura-chan with the cafe!"

"Oh," she said, hoping she wouldn't puke down his spine, "...good?"

"Hmm, Sasuke's grown..." Madara mused from somewhere to her left, and Sakura wriggled away from Tobi's enthusiastic hold to see what he was doing.

He had gotten her phone from the ground where she'd dropped her bag and was peering at the picture Naruto had sent her.

"Eh?" Tobi whirled and darted to look over his shoulder.

Madara's gleaming eyes shifted from the photograph to Tobi and back, but whatever he was thinking he chose not to comment.

"That," said Tobi very seriously, "is a very fine hat." A pause. "It's so nice to know that Sasuke-chan has found a boyfriend who teases him so cutely!"

"I don't think they're, er, together, Tobi-san," Sakura said, gingerly tugging on her phone.

Madara lifted his eyes to her for a second. "No?" he said, without releasing her phone.

She tugged it harder, despite the very uneasy feeling Madara gave her. As she spent more time around the psychopaths who now made up about ninety per cent of her general acquaintance, Sakura was coming to realise that Madara simply had that effect. It wasn't personal, and it didn't mean that he was about to leap upon her and devour her soul.

Although.

It didn't necessarily mean he  _wouldn't_ , either.

"No, I'm - well, I know Naruto's straight, anyway," she shrugged. Who knew with Sasuke, really? He didn't have a lot of communication skills.

"Hmm," said Madara, letting go of her phone. She quickly turned the screen off and shoved it back in her bag. God only knew what text or image Ino had sent her most recently, but Tobi and Madara definitely did  _not_  need to see it.

Madara unlocked the entrance to TRIVIA and rolled the door up, and then Sakura could swing into motion without thinking about Madara's dark eyes following her.

Tobi, surprisingly, shuffled her away from the refrigerated food. "Tobi is good at this part~!"

That was right, he was studying food and cooking, wasn't he? She'd forgotten. He seemed more or less at home, and with only a mild pang of uncertainty, Sakura left him to it.

She busied herself setting up the store for the rest of the day, but hesitated once she got to the coffee machine. It was... large and complicated, and she wasn't even entirely sure how to turn it on. "I don't suppose... Tobi-san," she said, gnawing her bottom lip. "Do you know how -?"

She stopped with a squeak because one largehand landed upon her shoulder, and Madara's long wild hair prickled against her skin for a scary second. Sakura felt her flight instinct kick in: her heart rate skyrocketed, her muscles tensed, her stomach coiled into knots -

"I can do it," he said, and steered her away from the machine. "He set the toaster on fire half an hour ago."

"Madara-sama!" Tobi wailed. "That was an  _accident_!"

Despite that Tobi talked a mile a minute and neither of them seemed to be actually doing much of anything (least of all work), Sakura was pleasantly surprised to find that when people started trickling in, orders started coming out in response. A few deliveries arrived and if Sakura was busy, Tobi cheerfully grabbed them and scuttled off to put things away.

The weirdest surprise was Madara. About half the people who came into the cafe stopped and swallowed and looked at him uncertainly before edging away from him and closer to Sakura - often they even required her to pass on their coffee order - but the other half seemed to want to-

Well. Sakura wasn't exactly a prude, but after listening to one young woman tell him that she'd dearly like to be taken home and kept as his pet, she decided some things were better off  _not_  overheard.

"I really don't get the appeal," she murmured quietly, frowning as a vaguely familiar looking student flirted shamelessly with him. Was he a medical student, too? She couldn't place him. "I mean," she clarified, waving one hand, "I mean, I can see where, you know,  _physically_ , but - he's not..."

She trailed off, trying to find a way to explain that Madara was pretty much always going to be the scariest person in any given room.

Tobi hummed quietly. "Tobi doesn't entirely understand it either," he admitted. "But Madara-sama's performance is very popular with bachelorette parties. Maybe they don't have very good instincts?"

Bachelorette parties. What a thought.

Sakura put it out of her mind and focused on the present weirdness, which was Madara frothing milk for a cappuccino. Somehow he managed to make the act of shaking cocoa onto the froth seem oddly threatening.

She was almost grateful for the swell of normalcy when Tobi, upon talking to a very rude customer for a few minutes at midday, casually upended his salad all over him. Sensing imminent tragedy, Sakura swiftly approached - although she had no idea what she was actually going to do to help.

"Tobi didn't mean to, customer-san," he was saying. It was hard to tell if he was sincere or not, since he always sounded terribly young and terribly sincere, but Sakura thought probably  _not_. After all, she knew that Tobi could be extremely graceful when he wanted to be.

"I," the customer was saying, trembling with anger - and possibly humiliation, "want to speak to your manager."

From just within hearing range, Madara threw back his head and laughed.

"Don't we all," Sakura muttered to herself, pondering the pertinent question of What Would Jiraiya Do? The answer was usually to smile and clap him on the shoulder and throw him out with a cheerful suggestion that he never return, but Sakura didn't feel quite comfortable doing that herself.

"Ah! There is no manager here at the moment," Tobi said, and then tapped his chin with one finger thoughtfully. "But Tobi can get you a free replacement! Just one moment~!"

The regulars who saw Pein and Konan daily may not have known Tobi, but they all knew how TRIVIA was run (or not run, as Sakura tended to think). Sakura thought that the only person surprised when the second salad also ended up on his lap was the customer in question.

After Tobi tipped the whole jug of water onto his pants 'to get the oil out quickly, Customer-san!' the customer finally had enough and stormed out, spitting mad and smelling faintly of olive oil.

"Oh, no!" Tobi said, clutching his cheeks. "Was that Tobi's fault?"

Sakura shoved a plate of toasted sandwiches at him, rolling her eyes at his melodrama. "Table three," she said.

His mood turned on a dime, and, whistling cheerfully, he sped off to supply the waiting table with their lunch. Sakura shook her head and mopped the floor where all that salad had been spilt.

"I need to leave at about three to make it to my self-defence lesson," Sakura said carefully to Madara in a lull that afternoon.

He shrugged and sipped his (third) coffee and informed her that he was perfectly capable of making ure everything that needed to be refrigerated was shoved in the fridge and locking up after himself.

"You'll have to clean up properly in the morning, though," he warned.

"I - oh, I won't be in, though. I have an exam." Although there was a short break after the exam period - or, rather, her exams were all in the first half of the examination period, meaning that after her last exam she had a week off from classes before mid semester exams were over for everybody.

"Then the cafe won't open," Madara said. "If Pein and Konan and Jiraiya all want to hare off to parts unknown without telling anybody, then they can hardly complain."

"I suppose," Sakura said, shifting nervously. She'd been trying not to think about Pein or Konan. "Do you have any idea where they are?" she asked him.

"Not at all. All I got was a voice message from Jiraiya about some quest in the middle of nowhere," he said, sounding annoyed.

That, at least, meant that they probably weren't - you know,  _in jail_. Or dead. Sakura nodded and determined to put it out of her mind.

"I am not going to be standing here making coffee all week," he added flatly. "So you'll need to either find somebody who can do it, put an out of order sign on the coffee machine, or learn for yourself."

Sakura furrowed her brows. "I can probably find somebody," she said, sounding more certain than she felt. She'd check with Tenten to see if she knew anybody who needed some extra work during the mid-semester break. If not, she supposed she could text Ino and Sasuke, maybe they'd know somebody...

Then she sighed. "I really do need to get going - not that Kakashi-sensei isn't late all the time anyway, but-"

Heavy hands closed on her shoulders.

Sakura yelped and jumped. Nothing in Madara's expression had indicated anybody coming up behind her!

"You have another self-defence class with Hatake Kakashi?" asked a cool, hard voice.

Sakura swallowed. She'd forgotten about Tobi's... thing. The thing where he kind of flipped the crazy switch when Kakashi was mentioned.

She turned in his grip, and found that he had no goofy smile or sweet confusion on his face now. His mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were sharp. They looked, actually, kind of like Madara's - for the very first time, Sakura was terribly aware of how much like Itachi and Madara Tobi really looked.

"Er," said Sakura. "Yes?"

Something awful flickered behind Tobi's eyes for a second, and she felt herself tense up to run.

"Ah!" he said, suddenly beaming brightly again, "Tobi will give you a lift, Sakura-chan~"

Alarm seeped into her. "Er, no, Tobi-san, that's really-"

"Oh, no, Sakura-chan," he said, in a voice gone very, very grim. "I insist."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am, as always, really thrilled by the comments you guys leave me here! Thank you. A question for those commenting, now that we've come this far in this long, long story: which of the TNH Akatsuki, now that you know them so well, would you prefer to share a room with? : D


	30. Chapter 30

Sakura officially had no idea what the hell had happened but she somehow ended up in the van with Tobi, having left the cafe to Madara's dubious people skills.

"You really don't have to drive me," she said hesitantly, watching the scenery flash past at an unreasonably swift pace.

"Sakura-chan shouldn't catch public transport if she doesn't have to. Busses are for people too crazy to get licenses," he added sagely.

Sakura rubbed her forehead. Increasingly, she was pretty sure _she'd_ be the weirdest person on the bus. "I appreciate it," she said finally, "but I know you have something against Kakashi-sensei, and I think maybe it would be better if you didn't see him," she suggested as diplomatically as possible.

"Is that so?" Tobi said cheerfully. "Tobi will be very interested to watch Sakura-chan's lesson," he informed her. It was like he'd heard her talking but completely bypassed the meaning of her words.

Tobi didn't just drop her off. He marched right up to Kakashi's gate with her, and stood there with a plasticine smile while Sakura rang the bell... and then settled down to wait.

"You're going to be standing for a while," she informed Tobi.

Tobi just hummed. "Ah, Pakkun-san," he said after a second, and leaned down so the smallest and most facially squashed of Kakashi's dogs could lick at his fingers.

"You know him," Sakura said with some surprise.

"Of course, Pakkun-san and Tobi are old friends. Yes we are. _Yes we are_ ," he added in a cooing voice to the dog. Pakkun scratched his ear with one hind leg and Tobi let loose a tiny squeak. "Look at Pakkun-san's little toes, Sakura-chan! They're so squishy and tiny."

Sakura snorted softly. "Very cute," she said, but she was more interested in the fact that Tobi _did_ know Kakashi's dog. More of them were heading for the gate, some with madly wagging tails. Not one of them barked or growled at Tobi.

What did that mean? At one point he'd been over to Kakashi's house pretty regularly?

"What is it with you and Kakashi, anyway?" she asked after a few long minutes.

Tobi's eyes darted to her and then quickly back down to the dog again. "Ano... Sakura-chan, that's very forward of you."

"You invited yourself, Tobi-san," she pointed out a little drily. "I figured you didn't mind me knowing."

He shifted on his feet. Some of his anxiety must have communicated itself to the dogs, because they began looking around uncertainly. "Tobi doesn't mind you knowing, exactly..."

"Rin was Obito's fiance and one of my best friends," said Kakashi's voice from behind the pair. He was only fifteen minutes late, dressed in jeans and a threadbare sweater with a scarf curled around his mouth. Sakura hadn't heard him approach.

He didn't look happy.

"Obito blames me for her death," Kakashi said.

Sakura frowned. "Who -?"

There was a sudden, awful _thwump_.

Tobi was _fast_. Really fast. Sakura almost didn't catch what had happened: one moment he was standing there, tense and angry like a wet cat, and the next he was retreating again, leaning back and recovering from his swift, wild lunge forward.

Kakashi's head snapped to one side. He staggered and lost his balance.

Pakkun began to bark loudly and frantically, and most of the other dogs came scrambling to the gate to do the same.

Tobi rubbed his knuckles. "Because it was your fault," he said over the din of canine voices.

"Wait," said Sakura. "What the hell is-?"

"Maa. As I said," said Kakashi, recovering and rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. "Obito blames me."

Sakura frowned. "O- Oh. Tobi-san, you're -?"

"I go by Tobi now," said Tobi. "Obito is... different."

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. "Creative," he muttered, and edged toward the gate, deftly inserting his body between Sakura and Tobi. Behind his hip, he jingled the gate keys at head height.

Taking her cue from him, Sakura took the keys and unlocked the gate. Tobi was looking at Kakashi like - like something supernatural and unholy. For maybe the first time ever, she could see a real resemblance to his family - he was stupid and he behaved like a small, slow child most of the time, but under all that there was that same core of steel and anger.

"Still late, Kakashi," said Tobi - who was apparently actually named _Obito,_ okay, that was new - with an expression like Kakashi's lateness offended him personally.

"I got lost on the road of life," Kakashi drawled. "Is there something you wanted?"

"Just here to keep an eye on Sakura-chan," said Tobi flatly. "Since we all know what happens to young women who are _meant_ to be under your care."

Kakashi didn't even blink.

"You're welcome," Kakashi said flatly, and allowed Tobi inside after him.

Thus commenced the most awkward few hours of Sakura's life - and she was including the time Hidan had used her underwear as a shield against Gai-sensei in that.

"Kakashi," said Tobi, before they'd even gotten started, and Sakura was putting her bag somewhere out of the reach of curious puppies, but it wasn't like she'd stopped hearing them or anything, "Sakura-chan has already been abducted once from right outside your house."

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. "That was hardly my fault."

"I don't care," said Tobi without missing a beat. "If she comes here, she's your responsibility. If she gets hurt..." he tugged anxiously on a lock of his hair.

The angry energy of him had changed, softened a little, like the reality of Kakashi was not the one he'd built in his mind. Not for the first time, Sakura wondered what the hell was wrong with Tobi. Something, definitely. His temper was... very unpredictable.

"If that happens, you'll get hurt. This is -" his eyes finally landed on Kakashi's face again, and then darted away very quickly. He met Sakura's eyes over Kakashi's shoulder instead. "Don't let it happen," he said after a second.

Kakashi looked deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

There was a long, long pause.

Then, "Come on then, my cute student," said Kakashi, with a smile that was beyond fake, and they commenced a very awkward lesson.

Kakashi might have had the laudable ability to conduct a lesson under the diamond hard stare of somebody who was trying to make his head explode through sheer force of will, but Sakura couldn't. She was twitchy and distracted, and every time she tried to do something and failed, Tobi's eyes narrowed and his face creased and he _so clearly_ blamed it on Kakashi.

Kakashi put up with this for about half an hour, after which time he chose to drag Sakura through the most gruelling, painful drills he could think of. She wasn't sure what he was trying to prove, but every time Tobi seemed to so much as twitch in their direction, Kakashi found some way to make training _even worse_.

Whatever else he was trying to do, Sakura was at least moving too fast to be thinking about Tobi. The types of movements Kakashi'd been teaching her were largely those that used another's momentum and force against them - perfect for a slight woman with limited muscle - and ones that required she improvise from the environment.

And dodging.

Kakashi was very dedicated to teaching Sakura to _dodge_.

Really, she was probably lucky that there was mud and grass out here. It was filthy, but at least it wasn't, say, _cement_.

He'd started with tennis balls, which had seemed unpleasant at the time, but since he'd graduated to _golf balls_ barely two weeks in Sakura was no longer under any illusions about how mean his methods could get. Since then, he'd changed up hurling things at Sakura with more physical attacks - he grabbed, he grappled, he pulled her hair and yelled in her face and tried to knock her over. She was forced to either get out of his way or engage, and he analysed her decisions in a low, rolling voice that was rarely flattering or comforting.

Although this was pretty normal - although maybe a little more vicious - Sakura had never been forced to consider what it looked like from outside before.

Kakashi feinted and then hooked Sakura's legs out from under her. Having dumped her on her butt in the mud, he dropped to straddle her thighs and grabbed one of her wrists.

Sakura's eyes darted to Tobi. From where he was, she thought in a rush of uncertain panic, it probably looked kind of compromising.

"Well?" Kakashi said shortly.

He sounded annoyed.

Sakura's attention snapped back. She wriggled, but she had no leverage and he was heavier. She clenched her free hand into a fist and brought it down toward his head like a hammer.

He scrambled for her hand with his free one, and she twisted it away and went for his eyes instead, fingers arched like claws. "Get -" her hips twisted, he flinched, and she freed her other hand by a combination of jamming her thumb into a tendon and luck, "- _off!"_

Sakura lurched and went straight for his eyes again, which was really only the distraction from her other hand, which was reaching to grab, squish and _twist_ his testicles. He jerked away and she took the opportunity to - finally! - free her leg and wriggle for leverage to throw him off.

The whole lesson only got rougher from there. Sakura collected a lovely bruise on her face from where she managed to dodge _into_ one of Kakashi's strikes - not her finest moment - but there was also a moment there where she managed to dodge out of his way and knock him over while he was off balance.

"And here's where I run away," she declared cheerfully, even as she offered him a hand up. Because he wasn't twelve, Kakashi took the high road and didn't sucker punch her.

"Pretty much," Kakashi agreed.

Tobi remained silent, but his expression said volumes.

As soon as Kakashi declared them done, Tobi hustled her out so quickly she almost got whiplash.

"...bye," said Kakashi in a bored voice, half-heard from well out the door and through the gate. One of the dogs whined.

Tobi clung to her arm all the way back to the van.

"If Sakura-chan gets into a fight," said Tobi, literally handing her into the van, like she couldn't possibly open the door and sit down without supervision, "she should probably run away before she has to hit anybody." He paused. "Or she'll _die_ ," he added, and then shoved the door closed on her.

Sakura made a face, mostly too exhausted to get annoyed, and waited for him to climb into the driver's side before she frowned over at him and said, "I'm not _that_ bad."

Tobi tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Now that she was paying more attention to him, he seemed like he had a lot of energy - something bottled up and contained with a terrible urge to go somewhere.

"Sakura-chan punches like she doesn't want to hurt anybody," he said after a second.

"Oh," said Sakura, and deflated. "I don't really want to hurt Kakash-sensei," she admitted.

"Tobi thinks that is particularly stupid, Sakura-chan," he said, and then he finally seemed to decide his tension wasn't going to dissipate if he was just staying still, so he pulled out and took them back into the flow of traffic.

At this point, Sakura was completely unsurprised when Tobi followed her inside the house and up the stairs. He didn't even run off to make a nuisance of himself in Deidara's room, which was probably a blessing for the structural integrity of their home. But it was a little worrying.

He sat down in the corridor outside the bathroom while she washed the mud and sweat off, and hadn't moved by the time she came out from under the hot water. On one level, she'd have put her foot down if he'd tried to follow her into the shower (possibly, she thought, her foot might have come down on his _face_ ) - on the other, such a stupid stunt would have represented a return to a more playful personality, and she kind of wanted that.

She made sure her clothing wasn't riding up anywhere and draped her towel over her shoulder before crouching down to his level.

He looked... a little lost. His eyes didn't want to focus on her, and there was a fine tremor in his hands. For all that, his face was expressionless.

It was kind of heartbreaking. "Tobi-san," she said in her lowest and most gentle voice, "is there something I can get you?"

He shook his head, and followed her back to her room in silence.

He was so weird that Sakura let him sit on her bed and just... watch her, while she studied. He didn't move. She didn't ask him any awkward questions.

They settled there and between the late light slanting through the windows and the steady glow of Sakura's lamp, the room seemed warm and safe. The bass thrumming from Deidara's music down the corridor was muted by walls and distance.

Tobi relaxed eventually, bit by bit. It took a long time.

Still, Sakura was kind of relieved when her door flew open and slammed into the opposite wall to allow Hidan to come in.

"Hidan-san shouldn't break into a lady's room without knocking," Tobi said repressively, even though Sakura had barely glanced up. One got used to Hidan rather quickly, she reflected - mostly out of sheer self-defence.

Hidan rolled his eyes. "Hurry the fuck up, idiot. You're going to make us both late."

There was a pause, and then life returned full-force to Tobi's expression.

"Tobi still has the van!" Tobi covered his mouth with one hand. "Oh, no! Madara-sama will definitely be angry! Tobi didn't mean to inconvenience everyone!"

He spilled off the bed and to his feet and dashed out the door, almost going through Hidan to get there.

Hidan made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat and then followed him out, and Sakura got up to close the door after him, because of course neither of them would bother with the courtesy. Silence reigned for a moment.

She exhaled slowly.

Downstairs, something went _thump_ and Hidan's voice soared.

She closed her eyes.

<To: Uchiha Itachi  
<Timestamp: 6:07 PM  
<Message body: Tobi’s really messed up, isn’t he?>  
  
<From: Uchiha Itachi  
<Timestamp: 6:10 PM  
<Message body: I think that must depend on your basis for comparison. Since I have your attention: when is your last exam over? There’s something we should do.>

Sakura eyed her phone's screen like it might bite. 'Something we should do,' was vague enough for anybody who might pick up her phone, which she supposed was a good thing, but - it also sounded _very ominous_.

She fired off a quick text telling him that it was tomorrow morning, though. While she was fiddling with her phone instead of studying, she also thought to text Tenten and Naruto to see if they knew anybody who would be alright at making coffee for a week or so.

Half an hour later, Sakura got a text from what she initially thought was a picture of some kind of dog monster. Then she realised she'd set that as Kiba's picture a little while back, and opened the message itself.

<From: Inuzuka Kiba  
<Timestamp: 6:43 PM  
<Message body: Naruto says you have work going at a cafe? I can make coffee, clean stuff, wait tables. Text me, I’m really poor.>

Sakura snorted softly, but she did respond to let Kiba know that she could only give him a week and that he should show up on Wednesday morning.

From: Uchiha Itachi  
<Timestamp: 6:45 PM  
<Message body: I’ll pick you up after the exam.>

Great. So that was her post-exam break all planned out: she'd finish up a three-hour test and then commence unspecified illegal activities with Itachi, and following that she'd run around like an idiot trying to keep Jiraiya's cafe open.

Great. Very... restful.

Something down the other end of the house made the shriek of tortured metal and Sakura smelled smoke. Over it all, Deidara could be heard cursing.

He sounded annoyed, not panicked, so after a second she went back to her studying.

Outside her door, something quietly said, "Me. Ow."

Sakura hurled an Icha Icha book at it. It landed with a thump, and outside her door M.O.'s claws tapped quietly on the floors as he walked away.

The next morning dawned, well before Sakura wanted it to. She talked Tenten down from an hour to a half-hour run in deference to her exam schedule, and then zoomed into school to sit in an enormous lecture hall for three hours in complete silence.

Sakura didn't find exams particularly nerve wracking, since she performed well under pressure. And, honestly? There was a lazy part of her that much preferred being able to sit down and get it all out of the way at some specified time, rather than ending up labouring on an assignment into the wee hours of the morning. Still, she was very glad when it was over.

"Why did I think becoming a medical student was a good idea?" she complained to Itachi, who met her outside the hall.

Itachi gave her a look that wasn't quite a smile, but it seemed friendly anyway. He looked significantly recovered from his own exam period: clean and brushed and, if a little tired, certainly not as zombified as he'd looked before.

"I think most degrees require exams," he pointed out.

"Not _this_ many," she muttered. "Can we detour for coffee?" she added. Working at TRIVIA had left her with a wee bit of a dependency.

"You can get one where you're going," he promised, and deftly led her to his car.

Once they were inside and on the road, Itachi glanced sideways at her. "This won't be difficult or dangerous for you," he assured her, which was both reassuring and oddly ominous. "Unfortunately, my face is well known, so I'll need you to deliver this," he held up a USB stick without taking his eyes from the road, "to my contact at the police station."

Sakura frowned, but she took the USB. "Okay..."

"I'd wait for a more opportune time, but some of the information is... sensitive. Having a young woman bring it to him at work, with a coffee and a home-made bento, will distract the gossip. Not to offend, but could you..."

There was a pause.

"Act stupid?" Sakura prompted.

Itachi's brows furrowed. "Not _stupid,_ just..."

"Don't worry. I've had dumb crushes before," said Sakura confidently, and chose not to mention that her biggest and most humiliating had been on his baby brother. "I can do all that. Go in, smile and giggle, deliver lunch and hand over the USB at the same time. No problem. Except I didn't bring lunch, and from what I've _heard_..."

Itachi snorted softly. "Don't worry," he said, handing her a two-tiered, round little lunchbox wrapped in a muted green cloth, "It all came out of a packet."

"Right," said Sakura. "Who do I ask for?"

"Uchiha Shisui," said Itachi, pulling up in a side street. "Nobody else, not even if they say they'll pass it on. The offices are five blocks that way. He takes his coffee black."

"Sure," said Sakura. She took the USB stick, hesitated over shoving it in her pocket or her bag, and ended up slipping it beneath her underwire instead. Her boobs, she figured, were as secure a place as possible, and if something went horribly wrong at least it was unlikely to be taken from her.

That she was already considering things that could go wrong left a sour taste in her mouth, but Itachi didn't comment on her evident paranoia.

Sakura hopped out of the car, strolled cheerfully down the street and ducked into a nearby cafe to order coffee. It was terrible compared to Pein's and she felt a sense of acute loss - not for his company, but for his _coffee_. She sincerely hoped the TRIVIA staff would show up back in town soon. She was getting sick of leaving messages on their phones.

The station was modern, with glass fronts and an angular, ugly reception desk. She had to balance awkwardly to open the door with her two take away coffee cups and her wrapped lunch. She propped it open with one hip, squeezed inside, and let it swing closed behind her, all under the receptionist's unhappy glower.

He looked like a strange blend of Uchiha traits and features, and had evidently been hit with what passed for the ugly mallet in that family - which was to say that he was only sort of above average in the looks department.

"Can I help you?" he asked, eyeing her.

"Oh!" Sakura beamed at him, trying to muster as much genuine good cheer as she could. He was clearly unhappy about having to talk to her, and she got a kind of vindictive pleasure out of being as gratingly sweet as possible.

"Yes, I think you could, if it's not too much trouble," she said sweetly. "I'm looking for Uchiha Shisui." She let out a soft, breathy laugh that she hadn't even known she'd had in her. "He forgot his lunch," she added, dangling the wrapped box from one hand.

The receptionist's expression darkened further. He grunted at her - yep, definitely a member of that sprawling and industrious family of _graceful social butterflies_ \- and he picked up a phone on his desk.

After a muffled conversation with somebody, during which he sounded terribly put out, he scowled up at Sakura again. "He'll be down in a second. Try not to waste too much of his time."

_Rude_ , thought Sakura, but she flashed him her teeth in the most saccharine smile she could possibly muster. "Oh, of course I won't," she cooed. "His work is _so important,_ after all! I wouldn't want to distract him from it. But surely even Shisui-san can't do his best work without taking a break to eat sometimes. Overworking is dangerous, you know, Police Officer-san, and -"

"Ah, there you are," said a voice, way, _way_ more cheerful than the reception officer, who looked like he'd been saved from a fate worse than death by this timely interruption.

Sakura turned and, smiling vapidly, found herself - well, _actually smiling_. Uchiha Shisui had inherited most of the same good looks Itachi had, without the pallor and exhaustion. His hair was short and unkempt, and he wore his shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his forearms.

She contemplated her next course of action - she could rush forward and clutch at him, as she might once have done to Sasuke when she was younger, but... She tried to think of somebody a little more demure than herself. Hinata, maybe. Hinata was a well-bred heir to a prosperous family like this one. That seemed appropriate. She bit her lower lip and tried to think about what Hinata might have done.

Sakura dimmed her smile a little and scuffed her toe on the floor. "Shisui-san," she said, fixing her eyes on his feet.

She needn't have bothered with too much acting, because he swept forward, took her by one arm - which he wrapped deftly around his - and smiled brightly over his shoulder at the man at the desk. "Thanks, Ichiro! I'll probably be out of your hair for a long lunch break, ne? The park should be nice at this time of day."

And then, ignoring the thunderous expression on Ichiro's face, he propelled them both out of the front room and back onto the street.

A couple of people waved to Shisui as they walked, so, taking her cue from him, Sakura didn't untangle herself from him until they were actually in the park, which _was_ actually pretty nice at this time of day. It was heading into spring, and although the flowers weren't quite in bloom yet, tiny pink buds could be seen on the cherry blossom trees. The grass was lush and soft, and even if the air was a little cool the sunlight was still bright.

Dutifully, Sakura handed over the lunchbox, the USB stick and the coffee.

It was a little weird once they'd separated from physical contact and sat down together. "You know," said Shisui, taking a sip of the coffee, "when I told Itachi-chan to stop meeting me on such an obvious schedule and send me a hot girl next time, I didn't actually expect him to go out and find a hot girl."

He said it like he was worried Itachi might have walked up to the first woman he'd noticed on a street somewhere or something and asked her to deliver hush-hush information about organised crime to the police.

...actually, that... didn't sound that far-fetched...

"I think he thought the idea had merit," she said. "Something about distracting gossip."

Sakura leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes to the sunshine. She felt like she'd spent much of the last... the last _forever..._ running around frantically trying to get things done. It was nice, now that exams were over, to be sitting in a park in the sunshine with a giant cup of coffee, even if she had to do it next to a stranger.

"Oh," said Shisui, so obviously disappointed that he had to be faking it. "Of course. He couldn't just send me a pretty girl because I asked for one. So, who are you?"

"Haruno Sakura," she said, cracking open an eye, "and I don't want to know what's going on here at all, so I'll settle for knowing that you're Uchiha Shisui and you're a police officer."

"I," said Shisui, "am a _clean_ police officer, which makes me about as rare as a pink unicorn at the moment."

"Oh," drawled Sakura, "good. I still don't want to know."

"Look, that's probably wise," nodded Shisui sagely, and he untied the cloth from his lunch box. "Oh, Itachi. Sakura-san, come, look at this beautiful convenience store onigiri and tell me my cousin doesn't love me."

Sakura snorted softly, but she couldn't help smiling.

They stayed there for an hour in the sunshine, and while Sakura guiltily wondered what Itachi was doing with that time, she also appreciated the reprieve. She hadn't realised how hard she'd been pushing herself until she had the opportunity to laze about in the sun.

Shisui, too, was actually very easy company. He seemed oddly sweet natured for a police officer, and as much as she was sure some of it was a front put up for any observers who passed them, he seemed like a genuinely friendly person. It certainly wasn't any hardship to sit around with him for a while - and it helped that he was _very_ easy on the eyes.

Sakura didn't have a _thing_ for men in suits like some girls did, but she had to admit there was a distinct non-zero possibility of developing one here.

She was almost sad when he declared it was fifteen minutes after he _probably_ should have been back in the offices, but they dutifully got to their feet, packed up, and meandered back to the huge police building.

Sakura walked slowly back to where she'd left Itachi, winding through the side streets and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. She startled when a beat up van pulled up beside her.

Both instinct and training had her checking her surroundings, stepping back and looking for the nearest place she could run - but then the van's passenger door slid open with a heavy grating noise, and Kisame flashed his pointed teeth at her from the driver's side.

Sakura's heart beat slowed. Kisame wasn't her favourite person in the world, but he sure wasn't the worst, either. "No Itachi?" she asked, exhaling slowly.

"He's got stuff to do. Get in."

Sakura did, and slid the door laboriously shut behind her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS I REALLY HATE THIS CHAPTER AND I'M REALLY SICK AND EVERYTHING'S TERRIBLE but I'm so incredibly sick of thinking about it, and all of the plot events I wanted to get out of the way in this chapter got done, and I just - nope. I'm done. Here, please take this chapter. Please take this chapter and don't ever make me re-write it.
> 
> Also, shameless plug: if you're following this and you love Hidan and Sakura and you haven't read _Dirt and Ashes, or: The One-and-a-Half Body Problem_? you should check it out. As long as violence doesn't squick you out, I mean. It's canon Hidan, and canon Orochimaru is one of the major villainous forces, so. Yeah. _Violence._ But otherwise!


	31. Chapter 31

Kisame pulled out into traffic as soon as Sakura had hauled the door shut. "Any problems?"

"Not really. The receptionist was rude, but Shisui-san was actually very friendly." She'd never have guessed he was related to Sasuke.

She settled her pack more comfortably on her knees. Kisame grunted an acknowledgement of her response and then an awkward silence descended upon them. She hadn't really learned to like Kisame, and she had the distinct impression that he didn't think very much of her either.

Sakura looked sideways at Kisame. As usual, he filled the space utterly: huge, muscled bulk, silvery-blue skin, filed teeth and gelled hair. His hands were huge on the steering wheel and his nails were starkly black against his weird pale skin.

She tried to imagine Kisame sitting around and painting his nails but she couldn't. Perhaps Itachi did them?

The van rumbled beneath her seat, tall, glass-fronted buildings rushing by as they sped along. The movement and traffic reminded her of that car, of being trapped with Sai and his dead eyes, but the shaking of the ancient van actually helped her a little. As long as she could feel that unsteady vibration up her thighs she could remind herself of the present.

She still closed her eyes and breathed deeply when the silence became too overwhelmingly heavy.

"You get weird about cars now?" Kisame interrupted eventually.

"Yes," she said, flat and unabashed.

And then they were back to stony, awkward silence again.

When they pulled up at the share house, Sakura was only too pleased to get the hell out of the vehicle and its awkward company.

"Thanks," she said over her shoulder, because manners had been drilled into her too well to allow her to be rude about a free ride.

Kisame evidently hadn't had a similar upbringing because he didn't respond at all, much less to tell her she was welcome. Instead he just pulled away from the curb and disappeared as fast as the beat up old van could take him.

Sakura checked her phone, finally, as she ambled toward the door.

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 1:45 PM

Message body: OK?>

That had been more than an hour ago. She fired off a text in response and sent another one to remind Kiba that he was meant to be meeting her at TRIVIA in the morning.

When she finally closed the door behind her, Sakura leaned back against it, tired beyond belief. The inside of the house was cool and dark compared to outside, and the tension she didn't know she'd been holding seeped away. Home, for all its vagaries and obstacles, felt safe and oddly soothing.

It didn't remain quiet for long.

"We have to do something," Hidan snarled from somewhere deeper in the house.

Of course.

With a sigh, Sakura levered herself off the door and made her way down toward the kitchen.

"You know the system as well as - or better than - I do," came Sasori's voice, forceful but without feeling; bored more than annoyed.

Sakura came to hover uncertainly in the doorway, braced against the frame. Hidan didn't seem to notice her, pacing as he was. There was a sense of coiled violence about him. He was like a wire about to snap.

There was also a bruise on his face, but Sakura wasn't sure how recent that was. Instinct and experience both said he'd probably deserved it.

Sasori was seated across the other side of the kitchen table. He had an empty coffee cup and a bored expression. He did notice her, but he only glanced at her once before returning his attention to Hidan. "Forty eight hours," Sasori said as though she wasn't even there.

"Uh," she said, hovering in the doorway uncertainly.

She would have turned on her heel and left, but her brain took that moment to remind Sakura that Kakuzu had charged her with keeping the peace - or what passed for peace - in their house while he was gone. She debated leaving them to it anyway, but a vague sense of obligation dogged her train of thought. That, combined with a healthy sense of self-preservation, made her want to be sure of what was going on.

Sakura straightened. She was almost as tall as Sasori if she stood up straight. "Is something wrong?"

Hidan whirled on his toes and scowled thunderously at her. "Where the hell were you?"

"Idiot. What is it you think Sakura-san might have done about it?" Sasori asked scathingly before she could even begin to answer.

Sakura, meanwhile, raised her eyebrows at them. "Working," she said slowly, which was more or less true - playing fetch and carry between Itachi and Shisui was certainly work... of some kind. "Had to drop off some files."

Hidan made a disgusted noise in his throat, but Sasori just hummed thoughtfully. "The Black Ops files you collected?" he said after a second. "With Shisui?"

"He didn't say," Sakura shrugged. She hadn't wanted to know, but truthfully if they were any other files she'd have been surprised - how much sneaking around and stealing paperwork could Itachi possibly engage in within the exam period?

"And this was - an hour ago? A bit more?" Sasori guessed dully.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" hissed Hidan, kicking a chair.

The wood gave a splintering noise and the chair went clattering across the floor, narrowly missing Sakura's ankles. She didn't move out of the way and she didn't flinch.

"Hidan-"

"There's no way they did it that fast, they'd have to literally-"

"Hidan," Sakura snapped, interrupting him. "What happened?" This she directed at both, or either, of them.

Sasori's brow furrowed and his lip curled. "Deidara got himself arrested."

"Ar-" Sakura opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

"Deidara," she repeated, glancing, perhaps inevitably, at Hidan. Some small part of her sort of expected that if anybody was to be arrested it ought to be Hidan. "For what?"

Both men turned to look at her.

Slowly, Sasori raised an eyebrow.

She shifted uncomfortably.

Hidan scoffed. "You seriously don't remember how he blew the whole goddamn building up when you were out with that spineless little heathen shitstain?"

"Oh," said Sakura. Then she closed her eyes. "They found his bag." Because of course they had. And they'd come immediately to arrest Deidara because there was a lot of evidence - like his ID. Chemical traces. People who knew he'd been there. The whole building going up.

God. She rubbed her hands through her hair.

"Yes," said Sasori. "The timing is very convenient. For Black Ops."

"Fast, too," Hidan muttered, kicking his abused chair back upright. He sunk into it, slumped into its back with his legs extended. Whatever he'd broken when he kicked it made a pained creak, but it didn't collapse under him. "Shit. Shit."

Sakura frowned. "It's got to be someone in the police, then," she surmised finally, picking her way across the room to sit in another chair. She picked one closer to Hidan than Saori. The expression Sasori was wearing was a lot more ominous than any amount of swearing and bluster from Hidan.

The three of them settled there: Sasori with his dead-eyed stare, Hidan shifting restlessly, Sakura staring tiredly at her hands on the wooden tabletop.

"The leak has to exist, basically. Assuming I did hand over the Black Ops files - probably, I think - then they moved really really fast in response. So either they already knew, or there's somebody up high enough in the police hierarchy to..." she trailed off.

Someone high up enough to wrangle an arrest within minutes of the receipt of those files - which didn't just mean the contact between Shisui and Sakura as the proxy for Itachi. It meant somebody had been able to check the files, which...

"Ne," she said slowly, "You think Shisui is...?"

 _I am a clean police officer,_  he'd said,  _which is about as rare as a pink unicorn at the moment._

Sasori clicked his teeth. "I don't know."

That... wasn't promising. She hoped it wasn't him. She'd believed him so easily. She didn't want to think he was that much of an asshole - and moreover, she didn't want to feel as though she'd been so easily taken in. Surely she was a better judge of character than that? He'd been so nice.

Sakura scowled at the scarred table beneath her hands. She had the niggling feeling that somehow she'd been responsible for Deidara's arrest, like her handing over that USB had been the trigger. That wasn't true, of course it wasn't, but...

"The timing could be a coincidence," she said lamely, even though she knew it wasn't. It was just too closely timed. Too perfect. Too good a display of threat on their behalf.

"Could be," said Sasori. He sounded like she felt: extremely doubtful, but open to acknowledging the possibility existed. "It's not," he added, just as Hidan opened his mouth to disagree, "but it could be."

"Yeah," said Sakura.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Then she looked at Sasori. "Okay. What do we do?"

He tapped the edge of his coffee cup. "Nothing, for now. They won't set bail for a while."

Sakura didn't bother to ask how he knew they were going to determine there was enough evidence to go forward with it. Doubtless a bunch of Deidara's possessions left covered in traces of explosives at the scene of the debacle was pretty damning.

Dammit, Deidara.

"Did you call Orochimaru-sensei?" she asked. She didn't like the man, but she thought they'd probably need his help.

"Yeah," said Hidan, "but he's got priors and all that endangering the public bullshit. He'll be lucky if he gets out at all."

"Nobody died in the explosion," Sasori countered thoughtfully.

"This time," said Hidan, looking up with a sharp, sudden smile.

"Ah," said Sakura. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Smuggling porn was one thing. Blowing up empty buildings and getting into violent fights were - definitely not good habits, morally speaking, but Sakura had more or less come to terms with them. Killing people was... sort of different. Anything that resulted in dead bodies, human ones, was... well, very final.

"Did he kill somebody another time?" she asked carefully.

A second after it left her mouth she wasn't sure she wanted to know anymore. She'd stopped even thinking about Gekkou, the missing man who used to live in her room. It was clear that Sakura's life was easier - and her mind a saner place to stay - when she focused on the minutae and didn't examine any broader moral implications.

Sasori made a derisive noise, but Hidan just smiled harder and raised his eyebrows at her. "Cold feet, Sakura?" he asked.

Steady. She licked her teeth. Her hands were flat on the table so if they shook nobody was the wiser - not even her.

"Not really," she said, maintaining eye contact and a blank expression. She could figure out if she was lying later. "But they'll keep him in remand if they think he's killed someone before, won't they?"

"Probably." Sasori stood up. "They don't have to have the preliminary hearing for forty eight hours," he said as he scooped up his cup and headed purposefully toward the kettle. "I expect that they'll keep Deidara for the full time period. He has an antagonistic relationship with local law enforcement."

At this comment, Hidan snorted. "He set a constable's hair on fire," he said cheerfully.

Sakura believed it. She sighed.

"So we won't even know what's going on for another day, maybe two," she concluded. "Well. Great." There was no enthusiasm in the comment. "Is he going to be okay, you think?"

Sasori shrugged and Hidan looked equally indifferent to her concern.

She waited for a couple of seconds, but neither of them actually deigned to answer her. She supposed she shouldn't have expected any better.

"Me. Ow," said a mechanised voice from somewhere in the corridor. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut against a shudder.

"Sasori-san," she said in a strained voice.

Sasori gave her a look that said his patience was most definitely on the outs. "He's not hurting anything," he said.

Except my sanity. Sakura ground her teeth and edged away from the source of the noise. Something sleek, furry and cool to the touch slid past her leg in a rough, lopsided gait. She swallowed.

She didn't look down again until that feeling was gone. M.O. was just the fluffy nightmare peering out from beneath Sasori's chair, and she had to deal with that. She would, because she had to.

M.O. was really, really creepy.

Despite all appearances - and Sakura's internal feelings - to the contrary, life went on. Hidan quickly disappeared from the kitchen, sulking every step of the way, to kill something and sacrifice it to Jashin-sama like the irredeemable nutjob he was. Sasori made coffee and retreated to his lair with his creepy dead cat.

Sakura sighed and went to wash her hair and pack up her mess from the morning's frenzied cramming.

She couldn't help but wonder what was happening to Deidara while she went through these simple, boring tasks. She was slightly troubled by the idea that he might have been responsible for killing people, but it didn't even slow her worry for him.

In the end, she didn't know any of the people he may or may not have exploded to death and she did know Deidara. She knew him as weird chemical smells, as long golden hairs left all over the place and clogging every drain, as obnoxious music, smoke and paint and the quiet "...Oops," that could wake her from a sound sleep from half the house away.

She ended up laying on her back in the dark that night, flicking through local government information pages on her phone. They were irritatingly opaque.

<To: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 9:55 PM

Message body: you know about legal stuff, right?>

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 9:57 PM

Message body: I took one unit of criminal law. Deidara will be fine, Sakura.>

<To: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 9:59 PM

Message body: Yeah, okay.>

Despite Itachi's rather dull assurances, Sakura couldn't help but think of the grim, dark cells she'd seen in films and on television. Was it really like that? Were all of the people there huge and grizzled and dangerous?

Of course Deidara could take care of himself, but...

She rolled over and reached for her phone again.

<To: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:07 PM

Message body: Okay, but what if he's not?>

<To: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:09 PM

Message body: They're not allowed to hurt him, right?>

<To: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:10 PM

Message body: Are they going to set the bail really high so he has to stay there?>

Sakura didn't like the feeling that something bad could be happening to him right now, while she lay on her bed doing nothing. She felt restless and edgy and ready to pick a fight.

It took longer this time before her phone buzzed.

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:19 PM

Message body: elements_crim_law pdf; crim_law_cases pdf; crim_law_and_process_senjuu pdf>

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:20 PM

Message body: I recommend beginning with 'Materials and Commentary on Criminal Law and Processes of Greater Senjuu'. The police procedure sections are good.>

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 10:20 PM

Message body: I'm going to bed and turning my phone off until morning. Good night, Sakura.>

She supposed that meant that she was being clingy. Or irritating somehow. Or maybe he, too, was short-tempered because of the arrest. Or even - the idea occurred to her that she was the source of Itachi's phone going off again and again while he and Kisame were... uh, engaged in quality time. The idea made her cringe.

At least Itachi clearly had no problem with establishing boundaries, she supposed.

* * *

It wasn't that Sakura had somehow  _forgotten_  about the dog. Kiba and the dog were a matched pair, and it was pretty uncommon to see one without the other. But she had sort of assumed that he wasn't daft enough to bring the thing to a work place where they made food.

She wasn't sure why she'd thought that. It was either underestimating his painful attachment to that dog, or seriously overestimating his intelligence and  _common damn sense_.

"I'm pretty sure you can't actually have him here," she said slowly, watching Akamaru race around to sniff everything while Kiba helped her pull down chairs.

Kiba turned a wounded look on her, like he couldn't believe Sakura could say such a terrible, awful, wrong-headed thing.

"For food safety reasons," she added, a little impatiently. "I mean, there's food preparation going on here. It's got to be clean. I think there's a health code rule about it."

"He  _is_  clean," said Kiba, glancing at Akamaru like he was worried he might hear Sakura's terrible slander and have his doggy feelings hurt.

Sakura scowled at him. "Inuzuka," she said, and the tone of her voice was a clear warning.

Kiba shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Look, you said it was only for a week, right? What's a week? You think you're going to get in trouble for a health violation in the next  _week_?"

Sakura chewed her lower lip.

Akamaru swiped his fluffy tail against her leg as he ran past with it madly wagging.

She had told Kiba it was only for a week in her text, mostly because she wasn't sure at all when Pein or Konan - or, hell, even Jiraiya - would be getting back from wherever they'd mysteriously disappeared to. She wasn't sure what she'd do once the week was up if they still hadn't returned.

It was true: there was only the slimmest likelihood of a health inspector showing up during this time period. If one did, her primary concern was that he or she would look into the running of the place and discover that it was by and large a drop off point for smuggling. Sakura lacked most of the mandated food preparation certificates to be allowed to run a cafe rather than just work in one, so any attention in the form of code violations would land her and TRIVIA in a lot of trouble either way...

She tossed up the pros and cons for a second, but in the end Kiba was the only person she had available right now and she needed him to make coffees.

She looked down at Akamaru and crossed her arms. "I know he was okay at school, but we get all sorts in here. If there's any problem with a customer, he's out on his arse," she said firmly.

"He'll be fine," Kiba said cheerfully.

"And you don't touch him and then touch food without disinfecting your hands between," she said forcefully.

"Sure."

"And you make me a coffee," she added. She needed to know if he was any good, but she was also exhausted and wanted her caffeine hit quite badly.

Kiba grinned.

It turned out less disastrously than Sakura had expected. Kiba's coffee, while not awesome like Pein's, was passably good. The customers didn't complain much, although they continued to ask questions about the absence of the owners that Sakura evaded answering.

It was actually astonishing how few people had a problem with the dog being underfoot. People patted him and cooed at him, and despite Sakura's nervousness about whether or not he'd be dangerous among strangers, he was friendly and well-mannered with every last one of them.

"That dog has more patience than I do," she confessed to Kiba around two, right as she was serving up the last of one of their salads.

"That's not really a high standard," Kiba snorted softly. Sakura wasn't exactly known for her patience and sweet temper.

Sakura gave him a baleful side-eye but didn't refute the statement.

All of the salads were pretty much depleted by that point. Sakura had used several of Konan's recipes, and the salads were at least all easily made of a morning. Some of the other things Konan miraculously produced for the cafe were significantly more difficult.

Like the biscuits. Sakura had no hope of reproducing those. And people kept  _asking_  for them.

"No, sorry," she said for the hundredth time, this time to a hoodied kid clutching a biology 101 textbook. "Konan-san's away right now on urgent business. She does all of our baking usually, so -"

"Well, when will she be  _back_?" he hissed, interrupting her.

Sakura offered a very fixed smile. "Probably about a week, we hope," she said tightly.

"But exams are  _this_  week," added another customer behind him, looking very put out. This one had long, bleached pigtails and striped socks.

Sakura's eyebrow twitched. "You don't say," she drawled.

"What the hell is in these biscuits?" Kiba muttered, after that pair had taken their coffees and, glowering, left for the university campus.

"Crack cocaine, apparently," muttered Sakura right back. Then she sighed, and, more seriously, added: "Chopped date and chai spice. They're practically famous in the area."

"Huh. That actually does sound pretty good. Ne, Akamaru!" A bark answered him. "Show these guys to their table."

He grinned goofily when the tiny dog came toward their customers and herded them to one of the empty tables at the back. "Attaboy," he said, beaming.

"We are so going to get done for a health code violation," Sakura said sourly, but her heart wasn't in it.

One stiffly offended businessman complained about 'dangerous animals' in the cafe, and Sakura simply smiled at him apologetically. "I'm afraid he's a service dog. I couldn't possibly ask for his owner to take him away."

"Totally," Kiba agreed blithely, pouring a curling fern leaf on the man's latte.

They were cleaning up by the time evening came around. It took Sakura and Kiba longer than it took Konan and Pein - not least because Sakura got confused while cashing up and had to start again, trying to remember how much was in the till to start with. It was cheerful company, even with Akamaru running around getting tiny paw prints in the freshly-mopped floor and trying to eat the mop.

Sakura paid Kiba in cash - "Cash means no tax, no tax means more money," he informed her solemnly, while she rolled her eyes and didn't bother to comment - and dug carefully through Konan's big black folder to find a receipt for deliveries so she could call the companies and order approximately the right things in the right quantities.

Accessing petty cash for normal business-hours expenses was one thing, but she did feel a pang of anxiety when the woman on the end of the line told her they'd send a monthly invoice like usual.

"Sure," she said, without letting it show in her voice. She had no idea if she'd actually be able to pay them, but she had hopes that Konan would be back by then. "Definitely."

Still. That was in a fortnight's time, and she had more pressing problems - Deidara, basically.

Kiba had finished doing a reasonably thorough clean down of the place by the time she hung up. He definitely hadn't lied about having previous experience, at least, although she had her suspicions as to whether or not he'd gotten away with keeping Akamaru so close.

"You're pretty different, you know," Kiba said curiously while she was writing down explicitly the details of the day and deliveries ordered for the owners.

"Hmm?"

"You're a lot more relaxed. You lied to that guy about Akamaru without batting an eyelash. And you don't seem-" he paused, eyeing her for a second, and then grinned sharply and apparently decided to go for it: "You don't seem nearly as wound up and pedantic since high school. How long have you been running this place?"

Wound up and pedantic. Flattering.

"A couple days," she said drily.

His eyebrows shot up.

"I have no idea where the owners have run off to, but it seems like it was pretty urgent," she elaborated. "They didn't leave instructions." She paused: "Actually I think they forgot I'd be showing up for work. I had to get one of their friends to come and unlock the place."

The idea of Madara making coffee still seemed like a strange and unsettling nightmare.

"So you don't actually know if they'll be back in a week," Kiba said slowly. At his feet, Akamaru yipped plaintively, and he leaned down to scoop the little dog up and deposit him in the front of his hoodie like that was a completely normal thing to do with a dog or something.

Sakura shrugged. "Not really, no." She finished with her notes in relative silence while Kiba mulled that over, and then looked up. "We're basically done here for the day, unless there's anything you need?"

He looked like he was about to ask a question for a second, and then he seemed to think better of it. "Nah, we're good. I'll catch you tomorrow, okay?"

He waved as he left her, accidentally smacking his hand into the origami dangling from the ceiling, and she heard the rumble of his bike from outside shortly after.

Sakura locked up mechanically, feeling a bone-deep weariness settle upon her. The cafe was silent and dim, and she crouched down to shove Konan's folder away beneath the bench and kind of just...

Stopped.

She was tired.

It was another ten minutes before she got to her feet and looked dully around. Everything was done and the place was clean. Sakura grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder before exiting out the back and locking the door behind her.

The bus ride home wasn't eventful, but the quiet rumbling of the bus and the silence of the other passengers made it easy to hear her phone buzz at her, telling her she had missed messages.

<From: Sasori

To: U. Madara,

CC: Sakura, Hidan, Kisame, Itachi,

Timestamp: 4:46 PM

Message body: Orochimaru in contact. Bail set 50k$ - S.>

<From: Hidan

To: BabyDoll

CC: SushiGaki, HousemateGirl

Timestamp: 4:50 PM

Message body: What the fuck? No, seriously, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??>

<From: Madara

To: Akasuna Sasori

CC: Hoshigaki Kisame, Haruno Sakura

Timestamp: 4:50 PM

Message body: 50k bet on Deidara showing up to court? No takers? Shocked.>

<From: Sasori

To: U. Madara

CC: Sakura, Hidan, Kisame, Itachi

Timestamp: 4:53 PM

Message body: I don't exactly have a spare 50k$ just kicking around.>

Sakura rubbed her forehead. Sasori had pretty much pinpointed the issue. None of them had that kind of money in liquid assets. Konan and Pein owned the cafe and their apartment, and she knew that Jiraiya had a certain amount of money, but the rest of them would have to work very hard to pool that kind of cash, and even then they'd have to ensure Deidara would actually show up for his court date to get it back.

She checked the time and chewed her bottom lip.

<To: Akasuna Sasori

CC: Zetsu, Hoshigaki, Uchiha Itachi, Hidan, Uchiha Madara

Timestamp: 5:14 PM

Message body: Meet up, 6:30 PM?>

She didn't think anybody would refuse, and took the opportunity to pre-emptively order pizza.

<From: Uchiha Itachi 

Timestamp: 5:21 PM

Message body: Kisame and I will be there.>

Sakura received similar texts over the next twenty minutes and by the time she actually got home she was unsurprised that some of them were already there. She could hear the voices as she came in, and she kicked off her shoes and let the door slam behind her.

Sasori had emerged from his lair and was deep in discussion with Itachi - who looked like he'd feel a lot better if he was asleep. Sakura sympathised, since she felt pretty much that way herself.

Kisame and Hidan were arguing something out with Zetsu - as far as she could tell, it was about the merits of... something about human decomposition and fertiliser. She got about that far in and didn't continue to listen, preferring to head back to the kitchen and make herself tea.

Itachi and Zetsu would probably drink tea, she supposed, and pulled out the bigger pot. This was another of Deidara's artistic 'failures'. It was designed to look like a legless flamingo, although some of the colour had run at some point, leaving the sides streaked. It was pretty ugly.

"SAKURA-CHAAN," bellowed Tobi's voice, and then the sound of swiftly-running feet.

Sakura swore and held the kettle out of reach, but she couldn't get it far enough away in time.

Tobi body-slammed her into a hug with a distraught noise and Sakura yelped. The kettle tipped and then boiling water spilled all the way down the back of Tobi's shirt.

"AH! AH, it's hot! SAKURA-CHAN ATTACKED TOBI," he yelled, releasing her immediately to flail wildly and cry.

"Well that's what you get for tackling somebody holding boiling water!" Sakura yelled right back.

Absolutely nobody made any move to help him for a few seconds.

Then, with a sigh, Itachi got up, grabbed him by the wrist, and went to wrestle him under cold water in the bathroom.

"Oww," Sakura heard him whine sadly.

"Please tell me you did that on purpose," Hidan said.

Sakura closed her eyes, took a deep breath and set the kettle back down on the bench.

"No," she said flatly. And honestly, although she was fairly certain that at this point she'd have said it either way. She still hadn't forgotten that Hidan had asked her, very plainly, to come and make out with him. He was heavily concussed at the time and she wasn't sure  _he_  remembered it, but she sure did. He didn't need the encouragement.

"Bullshit," he said, eyes gleaming.

"Not even." His faith in her would have been sweet had it not been, you know, predicated on her being a psychopath.

Since she'd lost most of the water maiming Tobi, Sakura re-filled the kettle and put it back on to boil. "Rude," she muttered, realising she'd have to wait longer for her tea.

Madara showed up only shortly after Tobi and about three minutes before the pizza arrived. He looked terribly dashing, as usual, in his work costume. There was something about a man in a tailored waistcoat with his shirt sleeves rolled over his forearms. Even if he was terrifying, she couldn't deny she understood why people liked to look at him.

He laughed uproariously and obnoxiously when Itachi returned, completely soaked, from the bathroom, trailing a mostly-dry and fairly sheepish Tobi. There was something wild and unpleasant about his laughter, and it grated on everyone.

"So  _mean_ ," Tobi gasped at Madara, like he was expecting something else and had been betrayed terribly.

"I am, yes," Madara agreed, unabashed, while over his shoulder it seemed as though Sasori and Hidan were about to throw down. Itachi was wringing his hair out over the kitchen sink, and Kisame watched that with unconcealed amusement.

"The kettle boiled," said Zetsu's voice from about three inches away from Sakura's right ear.

She leapt away like a scalded cat, turning to him with wide eyes.

He smiled at her.

"What," she said.

"The kettle. It boiled."

Slowly, her heart steadied. Right. The kettle.

She kept an eye on her surroundings this time as she filled the pot, but by the time both she and Zetsu had managed to steep and pour their own cups of tea everyone else was distracted with bickering.

Bickering and pizza, she amended, finding that they'd ripped open the boxes and fallen upon the greasy food inside like a pack of starving piranhas.

Itachi offered her one box, looking damp around the edges. She wasn't sure what was actually  _in_  that box, but she'd have to crawl through the general melee to get to any of the others. She took a slice gratefully. "Thanks," she said, remembering her manners at the last second before she jammed it in her mouth.

Zetsu sipped his tea.

Sakura closed her eyes and let the roar of the company wash over her. Hidan's voice soared above it for a moment, something about Kisame eating his pizza slice.  _Right._

"Okay, guys," said Sakura loudly. Then, "Hey!"

Madara seemed to be the only one who noticed her for a second - even Itachi was caught up in something, smacking one hand into Kisame's enormous muscled chest in what looked like a playful rebuke - and he raised one eyebrow.

She ground her teeth.

Was this what it was like to be a primary school teacher? Thank god she'd never seriously considered it.

She looked sideways at Zetsu, who was... having a conversation with himself. Of course he was. She was pretty sure he wasn't agreeing with himself, either.  _Okay_.

Sakura climbed on top of the table. "HEY," she bellowed at the top of her lungs.

Eyes turned toward her.

"Why are you on the table? Are you gonna dance?" Hidan said thoughtfully, through a mouthful of pizza. She was close enough to kick him but she didn't want to chance losing their attention to a fight.

"No," she said. "I'm on the table because you're all about ten and I can't get your attention unless I'm looming over you and screaming," she said pointedly. She stepped down onto a chair and then dropped to sit in it properly.

"We're here because we need fifty grand and nobody knows how to get it. Ideas?"

"Leave him in remand," muttered Kisame, looking annoyed. "He's the idiot who got caught."

"We should break him out!" Tobi yelled, loudly enough that Sakura winced.

Madara smacked him over the head without looking. "Don't be absurd. None of us has that much money in liquid assets, and I doubt anybody is willing to put up their house against the possibility that Deidara  _won't_  pack up and leave without facing trial. Were Konan, Pein and Jiraiya remotely capable of planning, we would know how to contact them, but in this case..."

"Kakuzu's out of contact for another-" Sasori paused, thinking, "-ten days, at least."

"Do you not count fucking days like the entire rest of the world?" Hidan wondered loudly, rolling his eyes. "Seven days. Ten. Seven. The difference is-"

"We could wait for him," Itachi interrupted, completely ignoring Hidan's interjection. "Although I doubt he would be willing to put up that much of his own funds." He tapped his fingers thoughtfully upon the tabletop.

Hidan snorted.

There was a brief, uncertain silence.

"I  _could_  feel out our contacts for a job," Sasori said slowly.

"What, a job that pays that much?" Sakura wondered, perking up.

Sasori licked his teeth. "There are several people with whom I - that is, myself, not Akatsuki - have had dealings in the past who do occasionally employ more... specialised services."

"Are you talking about a hit?" Hidan asked, a little  _too_  eagerly.

"No," said Sasori. "Not usually. I could certainly find out if there's a requirement for such a job. It won't be pleasant," he added, looking pointedly at Sakura.

She bit her lower lip. If they wouldn't have to kill anyone, that seemed... she swallowed. "At least check it out? It doesn't look like we have many other options."

Sasori nodded, and rose to go do that.

"Otherwise we could steal it," Madara suggested thoughtfully.

"You want to bail somebody out of jail with stolen money," Kisame said, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, that won't end in shit at all."

"Not if we're careful," Madara shrugged.

"Pretty sure there's less risk in whatever job Sasori comes up with," Kisame said, scrunching his nose. "Although I'm not going to be there either way. We have drops tomorrow and Saturday."

Itachi nodded. "Our reputation as a reliable source needs to be protected in these circumstances particularly," he pointed out.

"Right," muttered Sakura.

"I'm just saying," said Hidan into the ensuing silence, "I'd be up for a hit."

"Orochimaru-sensei would be up for a hit on  _you_  if you make his job any harder with casual murders," Madara pointed out.

Hidan looked mutinous.

In the end, though, the discussion was moot. Sasori came through with a job inside two hours - a worryingly short time, from the raised eyebrows sent his way by the others - and he gave the details to Sakura with a completely blank face.

"Uh," she said, squinting. "That sounds really weird."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Forty five grand."

She chewed her bottom lip and looked across at Itachi, who seemed... a little perturbed, but hardly appalled. "It's hardly hurting anyone," he said slowly, and a couple of the others rolled their eyes like this was a very silly concern.

It was Sakura's concern, though. She wasn't entirely sure about it, but decisively she nodded. "I could do that."

"Excellent," said Sasori, with a cool smile. It was the most expression she'd ever seen on his face, and Sakura had a sinking feeling in her guts at the sight.

The group dispersed then, and Sakura spent the rest of Wednesday evening trying to figure out how she'd be able to keep the cafe running while she was off getting paid to do really very illegal stuff.

She couldn't leave it to Kiba alone. The very thought made her shudder. But if Itachi and Kisame were busy, Madara was going to be working with her, and Tobi and Kiba together seemed like a recipe for great and terrible disaster.

She rubbed her forehead.

She needed somebody who took their responsibilities extremely seriously and who she trusted enough not to screw her over. Somebody she knew well, she supposed.  _Not_  Naruto, although he'd probably do it if she asked. He and Kiba together were a tragedy waiting to happen.

But picking somebody who already knew how to deal with Kiba wasn't a bad idea.

Somebody who learned fast, who could keep Kiba in line...

She thought of Ino first, but she knew Ino would ask questions.  _So many questions_. And she had an unerring sense for when Sakura was prevaricating or evading the question.

Eventually, she sighed, rolled over on her bed, and pulled out her phone.

<To: U. Sasuke

Timestamp: 9:45 PM

Message body: You're on break?>

<To: U. Sasuke

Timestamp: 9:45 PM

Message body: I need a kind of big favour.>

<From: U. Sasuke

Timestamp: 9: 47 PM

Message body: How big.>

She could almost  _hear_ how unimpressed Sasuke was. She told him.

It took a lot of convincing.

But in the end, it was Sasuke who showed up at TRIVIA the next morning. While he did that, Sakura went to rob a morgue.


	32. Chapter 32

Sakura had to crawl out of bed even earlier than usual to make it out to TRIVIA on time to meet Sasuke. She wasn’t working at the cafe but she ended up putting on her cafe clothes anyway - black knee-length shorts, dark grey wrap skirt, a clean sleeveless shirt in a muted red. They were good, inconspicuous clothes, the kind anyone might wear. All of her forethought had occurred the night previous, of course - Sakura was roughly as sentient as M. O. at this time in the morning.

Hidan was already up when she was leaving, but with neither Deidara nor Kakuzu there to ride herd on him, he was just a droning prayer behind a locked door. Sakura left him to it, although not before pausing in the corridor outside his room. She couldn’t really tell what he was saying, but the rhythmic rise and fall of his voice was almost hypnotic - she could have leaned her head on the wall and fallen asleep to the sound of it.

Or maybe she was just that tired.

Either way, it was still dark when Sakura locked the door behind her.

The bus ride to TRIVIA was silent: just Sakura and the driver rumbling through the dark and empty streets. She thanked him when she disembarked and got only a grunt in return. The sky was beginning to show the first signs of lightening toward the east, which turned the rest of it to a pretty, luminous periwinkle. The short walk from the bus stop was almost silent, except for the distant sounds of the occasional car, and lit predominantly by still-glowing streetlights.  
Sasuke was waiting for her. With a murderous facial expression, yes, but he was there. He was about as much of a morning person as Sakura, which was to say: not. It was a big deal for him to have made it out here from Sound so early.

He was unkempt, with his spiky hair tumbling around his face and shadowed eyes that spoke of very little sleep, but the look was working for him and somewhere in the past months he’d picked up a short leather jacket. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and a sneer on his face, Sasuke looked significantly more like a teenaged delinquent than anybody Sakura knew who actually was.

He always had looked like Itachi, but now that she knew him Sakura could actually see a lot of Madara in his face -- but Sasuke’s manners were more restrained, features finer, more polished. And _infinitely_ less unnerving, even as cranky as he so frequently was. Sasuke on his worst day wasn’t half as unsettling as Madara on his best.

Sakura knew who she’d rather spend her day with... and unfortunately, she also knew who she _was_ spending her day with.

“Thank you,” she said with genuine feeling, and restrained herself from clutching Sasuke in a hug. Sasuke did not like hugs, or really physical affection of any kind -- Naruto was the exception, but not often, and even that was tempered with periodic fisticuffs.

Sasuke grunted. Up close, his eyes weren’t even focused on her. “Why am I even here?” he demanded, grudgingly taking the key from her.

“I’ve got to get to the hospital,” Sakura said, which wasn’t even a lie. The lie was the next bit: “I’m way, way overdue for a pap smear,” she added blithely, “and this was the only time they could fit me in.”

At the phrase ‘pap smear’, Sasuke’s expression did some fascinating acrobatics before settling on a predictable mix of confusion and distaste. Sakura had been counting on that -- the uncomfortable masculine disgust for all “feminine” aspects of biology. He’d put it out of his mind and ask no further questions.

And that was just perfect.

“Go on, then,” he muttered, and Sakura thanked him again before racing back to the bus stop. She chose not to let him know about Kiba coming in later, which was probably not very kind of her -- but her phone would be off most of the next day, and she was more than happy to let them sort it out on their own.

Tajima Memorial Hospital was wide awake when she stepped down from her next bus and approached on foot some thirty minutes later. As a twenty fou hour facility with a bustling accident and emergency service, it basically never slept. That alone made her nervous, and quite honestly the obvious security guard at the emergency department parking bay wasn’t helping matters.

There were ambulances performing restock and supply procedures at one dedicated part of the lot, but it basically seemed to be in chaos. That stood to reason, actually, since Sakura vaguely remembered some kind of industrial action about funding for paramedic services -- there had been students protesting about it at her university campus, and the only reason she remembered even that much was because she made a point of avoiding such campaigners. Still, looking at the six or seven stripped-down ambulances idling in their designated area, Sakura couldn’t help but suspect that maybe the student campaigners had kind of a point...

When Madara pulled up alongside Sakura she didn’t even notice for a few long seconds. There were, after all, several very similar vehicles around the area. She did a comical double-take when he gave the passenger side door a rough shove open.

“Stop daydreaming and get in,” he commanded imperiously.

Sakura stared for a split second. Then she scrambled inside the passenger seat. “Did you _steal an ambulance_?” she hissed once she’d slammed the door shut.

“Nobody was using it.” He pulled away from the curb and moved back into the inconsistent flow of early-morning traffic.

“You didn’t get, er, seen, or caught on camera, or --?" She glanced sideways at him. There was a distinct sense of potential violence about Uchiha Madara, even as he sat loose and relaxed in the driver’s seat with his spiky dark hair tossed over the shoulder of his seat.

Madara laughed at her. His laughter was throaty and full-bodied and made her hair stand on end.

“Never mind,” she muttered. Creep.

Digging through the bag in the foot well of the passenger side revealed a surprisingly professional looking hospital ID dangling from a lanyard, a hard copy of the hospital blueprints -- out of date in one wing, but plenty accurate for the area they needed -- and a visitor’s map downloaded from the hospital’s website. Sakura took her time examining them while they circled around the hospital campus.

“Is this Itachi’s work?” Sakura asked, holding up the hospital ID. It had a name with which she wasn’t familiar, but her picture. She was trying to figure out where he’d even found an appropriately unflattering ID photograph of her -- mostly so she could set it on fire and pretend it had never existed.

“Yes. It will stand up to a cursory look, but not much else -- we didn’t give him enough notice for anything better.”

Sakura was still actually pretty impressed that he’d managed even this much on such short notice. She knew he was busy with other work for the Akatsuki and that he was also backing them up somehow in the technology arena. Sakura could use a computer, use her smart phone, order things online and submit her assignments, that sort of thing -- but she didn’t even know what to call half of what Itachi did with computers. Magic, basically, in that it was sufficiently advanced technology.

“Okay,” she said, returning to the maps, “good to know.”

The morgue was on the other side of the building, but once they were there the heist went smoothly. In hindsight, that should have been a warning.

Nobody gave the ambulance a second glance when they pulled up, even though it was nowhere near where the others had gone -- Sakura wondered if the ambulances regularly dropped off people who‘d died in transit. That was a grim thought.

She took a deep, nervous breath and exhaled noisily. Okay. This was -- she was actually going to do this. It wasn’t like she could get cold feet now. Her partners in crime today were Hidan and Madara and she doubted that either of them would take kindly to her backing down at the last second. It would probably be less painful to be caught and arrested.

“Chin up, shoulders back,” Madara instructed, as though Sakura’s evident nervousness was not only incomprehensible but also personally offensive. “If you look like a pathetic little child you’ll be caught.”

“Easy for you to say,” she muttered right back, but nonetheless shoved the maps back into his bag. “You’re not going in there.”

“There are only three of us. You could have been a driver.”

“I can’t drive,” she said shortly, “so, no, I couldn’t have.”

“And whose fault is that?” When she glared but didn’t respond, he nodded. “Don’t get caught. And hurry up.”

Sakura glowered right back at him but she did square her shoulders and get moving. Despite being a jerk and a creep and a pain in the butt, Madara was right -- she was stuck doing this scary part and if she didn’t pull it off properly, they’d be screwed.

“Okay.” Deep breath.

She snapped on her ill-gotten ID tag and hopped out from the vehicle. The doors in from here were automatic, the lights were harsh and bright and oddly wearying. She tried to move like she knew exactly where she was going and to look like she was walking with purpose so she wouldn’t be stopped.

As she headed inside, the security guard glanced at her ID -- not even at the card, actually, just looking for the lanyard and square bit of plastic dangling around her neck -- and then ignored her completely.

It was still terrifying. Every step she took left Sakura dead certain somebody was going to look at her, realise she didn’t belong, and have her carted away by security -- even though she hadn’t done anything wrong yet. She almost expected them to read her intentions on her face, like the angle of her jaw and the furrow in her brow was somehow broadcasting _yes I am here to steal a dead person._

At this time of the morning this part of the hospital still had only a skeleton staff, which was the primary reason they’d ended up choosing to execute this insane plan at dawn. It was one of the few parts of the hospital that could afford to keep to a rigid schedule. Unlike live patients, bodies could wait for the medical examiner to show up in the morning.

On this particular morning the attendant from the night shift was hanging around looking both exhausted and pissed off. He was an older man, salt and pepper hair and five o-clock shadow. Sakura didn’ know what had been done to delay his morning shift relief, but she was glad to see him furiously texting instead of paying her any attention.

Despite the comfort of two potential problem areas breached, Sakura’s heart was still thundering with terror and adrenalin. But nobody even paid her any attention, and for the most part she was alone with only the sort sounds of her shoes upon the linoleum for company.

Even the morgue itself was not exempt from that distinct scent of disinfectant and something that was more uniquely _hospital_. This area hadn’t been fully detailed on either of her maps, but part of what she’d need had to be stored on one of the computers here. Her intended target was quite specific, and she’d need to look up the storage information for that body in particular.

There were a couple of older desktops in the room and Sakura looked over them until she found one with somebody’s login and password stuck to the corner of its screen with a yellow sticky note. This was the problem with requiring every password to be a string of gibberish with numbers and symbols and capital letters: people wrote them down to remember them, and that made the holes in security so very much worse. There clearly was some kind of additional verification for the portal by which current patient records, referrals and discharge summaries were accessed, but Sakura didn’t need any of that.

The body she needed was stored in a specific, numbered drawer on a sliding metal slab. The dead person was wrapped in a heavy, water proof body bag and she had to unzip it partway o confirm the identity of the body. She wouldn’t have wanted for a clerical error at the hospital to make her take the wrong one.

Sakura was bemused to learn that there was actually a toe tag. She hadn’t realised that was really a thing people did -- it seemed like something from one of Jiraiya’s cheesy novels, or maybe a film trope. And as long as Sakura was concentrating on distant trivialities, she wasn’t looking at the body’s face, wasn’t thinking about the many possible fates in line for her cold flesh.

There was an ugly, Y-shaped cut across the torso, stitched carefully. It would never look better than that, and that was... weird. Sakura was used to thinking of bodies, flesh, people as living things that grew, changed and recovered but this was something that would never get better, only decompose.

She was fascinated and her nervousness briefly abated in the face of a sudden hope that her classes would begin using cadavers soon. She was sure they’d learn a lot from something like this.

But then -- Nope. Now was not the time.

She took a deep, steadying breath to stay the rush of anxiety that came with that thought. She needed to get the body and get out before somebody thought to ask her what she was doing there.

Satisfied that she had the right person, Sakura zipped the body back up and went to find a trolley. Getting the body on the trolley was a bit weird and laborious, but Sakura could only rely on Itachi’s ability to work some arcane magic upon the hospital’s servers and remove any suspect footage. This was actually the part that concerned Sakura the least, oddly. She knew Itachi would be precisely as competent as advertised. She just had to get herself and the body out, and he could take care of any digital trails.

She might have been freaking out internally, but Sakura really had very few problems getting out. Nobody asked questions. Nobody even really stopped her. One lady did ask her for directions to the hospital gift shop, but Sakura made up the location and sent her away with the most ambiguous of directions she could have given.

Madara was waiting for her with the ambulance engine idling and the doors thrown open, waiting for her like he could have sat patiently for hours. His eyes were shadowed in the automatic lighting. The body was deposited with very little trouble into the back area of the vehicle and Sakura hopped back up into the passenger side.

Madara drove.

Several back streets and twists later, they turned into a dingy side-street -- which was where Hidan was waiting, sleepy-eyed and apparently bored out of his brain.

“Finally,” he complained, hauling open the side door of what Sakura recognised as Kisame’s old van. It made a grumbling scraping sound, loud in the early stillness.

Madara ignored him entirely and just waited until they had the body out of the ambulance. He then took off to leave the ambulance somewhere where its mysterious movements could be attributed to overworked paramedics rather than associated with convoluted corpse theft.

It was easier to move the body with his help, and together they shoved the dead woman into the back of the van without any further difficulty. “Okay, we’re good,” Sakura breathed, pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the whole terrifying, bizarre business had gone.

Hidan gave her an impatient second to haul herself into the passenger seat. When they were settled he hit the main road, drove several blocks and pulled over into another side street.

There, only a few minutes later, Madara showed up and climbed into the back with the body.

“What did you do to delay the morning shift?”

“Slashed his tyres," Hidan shrugged, pulling out and back onto the main road upon which the hospital was situated.

Madara snorted softly, like he couldn’t be more pleased that the morgue attendant for the morning was still probably waiting for a lift somewhere while their partner no doubt texted somebody about how much of a nightmare they were to work with.

Sakura couldn’t help but feel nervous for miles and miles, naggingly sure that somebody had noticed, somebody knew. But then they were on the road out of town -- all three of them and a stolen dead person.

Sakura couldn’t help glancing into the back, even though she knew all she’d see was the matte exterior of the body bag. “I _cannot_ believe we just did that,” she muttered.

She'd personally broken into a morgue and lifted a human body so they could smuggle it to some (evidently very rich) nutter who needed it. She wasn't even sure how many laws she was breaking right now.

“Fucking pointless, if you ask me,” Hidan said, scowling.

"How lucky, then," Madara murmured, "that nobody did."

It was soon evident that Hidan was almost incapable of driving inside the city limits, primarily because other people on the road personally offended him by... well, mostly by being there, as far as Sakura could tell.

Travelling with Hidan in the driver‘s seat was basically just as upsetting as travelling with Deidara, but marginally less lethal. _Probably_.

Madara seemed to take it in stride when Hidan screamed abuse at other people through the driver‘s side window. He didn‘t even twitch at the bellows that made Sakura flinch.

“Pull over,” Hidan snarled out the window at a dumpy woman in a four wheel drive. “ _Pull the fuck over!_ ”

She gave him a look that was somewhere between alarmed and annoyed, flipped him off, and gunned the accelerator so she could leave their trundling van in the dust.

He caught up with her two sets of traffic lights later and Sakura had to lunge to grab him before he actually climbed out of the van.

“Let me go, shithead, I’m going to _beat the grey matter out of her face!_ ”

That was pretty much exactly why Sakura wasn’t letting him go. “Oh my god.” She clung tightly because he was significantly stronger. “I know you are, you lunatic. You can’t right now. We have a _dead body in the back_ ,” she hissed this last into his ear, sotto voice.

There was a loud, angry beep from behind them. Then another. And another. Somebody yelled something pretty obscene.

“Lights’ve changed,” Madara said without much concern.

“Hidan!” Sakura squawked when this didn’t seem to impact him at all. She heaved on his shoulders.

“For fuck’s sakes,” he muttered, and pulled his door closed. Through the window he presented his middle finger to the beeping travellers behind him. “PISS OFF,” he bellowed back.

Sakura covered her face with her hands. “Oh my god,” she repeated faintly. There was no way they were going to get away with this. They were going to get arrested and then she’d have an absurd criminal history -- broke into morgue, impersonated a doctor, broke into computer records, stole dead body, ran away with _stolen dead body_ \-- and nobody would let her get registered at the end of her studies.

Madara made a low, derogatory noise in his throat, but when Sakura turned to glare at him - again - she found that he looked like he was half asleep, lazy and relaxed like some large, mean cat. How he could be so calm was beyond her, but perhaps people got used to committing serious criminal offences after enough experience.

Sooner rather than later, though, they made it well past the edge of the city. This far out there were fewer cars, fewer people, and a countryside made up primarily of terraced rice paddies. Huge swathes of land were green and wet and pretty in a stately sort of way. There had to be some kind of farming community in the vicinity, but Sakura saw no hint of such a thing.

With nobody around to see them, it was easy to begin to relax, at least a little. Hidan’s driving was a little speedy but actually fairly reasonable once they were away from civilisation. With Madara at least pretending to doze in the back and the woman’s dead body a very cooperative passenger, it didn’t feel that different from most normal days.

“I hope Deidara’s okay,” Sakura muttered, staring out the window. Every time she thought about him, she imagined horrifying prison scenarios. Were the guards there likely to hurt him? Did other people push him around? She really had no idea what remand or assessment prisons were like, but contemplating it made her feel really nervous.

And, well, Deidara was pretty in a way that was almost feminine. She was dead certain that his looks wouldn’t work in his favour when he was stuck in a hypermasculine environment...

She felt a little queasy thinking about what might be happening to her friend -- and that, in turn, made her determined to see this through.

“He’s suffering,” Hidan said flatly. “It’s Jashin-sama’s gift to us, and how you know you’re alive.”

Sakura eyed him, and wondered if she was meant to find that somehow comforting. Because it _wasn’t._

She wanted Deidara back home where she could keep an eye on him. She honestly hadn’t realised she felt so protective of him before. But now she was sure there was a lot she’d do to have him out on bail, in her house, under her watch, while they waited for the preliminary hearings to be sorted out.

“Besides, he’s not the one who has to drive this hunk of shit halfway across the country for his sake,” Hidan added, “and none of this would have happened if he’d just minded his own fucking business and not _followed you_ on your goddamn date with that dumb heathen bastard--”

That, Sakura allowed, was true, if extraordinarily hypocritical.

But once she’d set him off, Hidan was set to run at the mouth for hours on end, and it didn’t take him long to realise that Sakura was a very captive audience -- unless she wanted to hurl herself out of another moving vehicle.

A rambling commentary on Deidara’s character flaws disintegrated into more conversation about Jashinist scripture -- although by ‘conversation’ Sakura by and large meant that he talked and she tried hard not to listen. His voice and the rhythm of the text he was quoting were both compelling, though, and it was oddly hard not to follow along.

Eventually, even though Sakura was resigned to being a victim of Hidan’s proselytising, Madara broke free of his doze, listened for about three seconds, and then smacked Hidan hard over the head.

The van swerved. There was a screech of tyres and a _clank_ from the van‘s door. Sakura squeaked and braced herself with one hand on the dash.

“What the fuck?!” Hidan snarled when he’d gotten control over the vehicle. He threw an ugly look over his shoulder at Madara. “Are you trying to get us all killed? That’s not how sacrifice fucking works, you know!”

“Pull over at the next town,” Madara instructed without actually responding to Hidan’s bellowing. “We’re going to swap.”

Hidan’s eyes narrowed, and Madara favoured him with a narrow, inviting smile that made Sakura’s hair stand on end.

Eventually, Hidan made a disgusted noise but did exactly as he was asked.

Calling their stop a ‘town’ was a bit of an overstatement, really. It was a general store, a couple of houses and a petrol station. There were a couple of big trucks in front of the store, so Sakura assumed it was something of a habitual stop for lorry drivers travelling through the area.

When she got out to stretch her legs, there were a couple of those drivers lingering over cigarettes a fair distance away from the petrol station. She eyed them, on edge and nervous -- she could not _wait_ for this mess to be over -- and dismissed them as more or less harmless.

After a second, she turned her phone on to check her messages.

<From: Tenten  
<Timestamp: 5:37 AM  
<Message body: Where are you? Did you seriously get up and leave before 5:30? You'd better be jogging!>

<From: Tenten  
<Timestamp: 5:43 AM  
<Message body: LUNATIC WITH GARDEN SHEARS? I kicked him in the face but I think he might have been crazy. Shit. Sorry?>

<From: Akasuna Sasori  
<Timestamp: 5:52 AM  
<Message body: A strange girl broke in through your balcony. I have rescued her from Zetsu. Or Zetsu from her. Unclear. You can get me coffee on your way home.>

Sakura sighed. Of course Tenten would choose this morning to show up unannounced at the crack of dawn. She’d been doing so well with actually texting the night beforehand that Sakura hadn’t thought to notify her that she’d be gone.

...of course, she shouldn’t have _had_ to, since her movements were none of Tenten’s business, but...

She muttered something mean under her breath but internally concluded that she’d buy Sasori’s gross instant coffee for him. It was worth it for stopping that situation from getting any worse.

<From: U. Sasuke  
<Timestamp: 6:45 AM  
<Message body: Inuzuka Kiba? You owe me.>

That one came with a pang of guilt. Yeah, all right. She’d known that wasn’t her best move.

<From: PIG  
<Timestamp: 9:42 AM  
<Message body: My psychopath room mate snapped the heels off my shoes? I’m going to set her hair on fire.>

<From: U. Sasuke  
<Timestamp: 10:07 AM  
<Message body: Did you tell Itachi I'd be here?>

<From: U. Sasuke  
<Timestamp: 10:09 AM  
<Message body: Never mind. >

At that, Sakura really did wince. Itachi rarely ever came into TRIVIA, despite studying at the nearby Senjuu U. What on earth were the chances? She quickly flipped to the next text in her inbox, which --

<From: Hoshigaki  
<Timestamp: 10:14  
<Message body: You could have told us the kid was working at your cafe. Itachi nearly had a fucking heart attack.>

Sakura scowled. How the hell was she supposed to have guessed that would happen? She clicked her tongue. It was hardly her fault.

She was already going to have to apologise to Sasuke. She rubbed her forehead, turned her phone off and shoved it back in her pocket.

After a second she frowned and thought about Ino’s text again. She wasn’t _really_ going to set her room mate on fire, right?

Hidan made no effort to be quiet when he approached, so she wasn’t too surprised when he tugged her by the arm. “Break’s over, hurry up before His Highness has a tantrum.”

She snorted softly. How incredibly hypocritical. “All right, you don’t have to grab me.”

His strange coloured eyes focused on her for a second. They travelled from her face to her shoes and back, and took their time about it. “I don’t _have_ to, no,” he drawled.

She rolled her eyes, but let him keep his grip. Hidan was nuts and there were worse indignities she could be suffering right then. She climbed back into the passenger seat with a yawn.

Madara was already there, tapping his fingertips against the steering wheel while Hidan took his sweet time crawling into the other seat.

Sakura looked sideways at Madara. “I made Sasuke work at TRIVIA today,” she informed him after a second, mostly because he seemed extremely impatient to be on their way.

There was always an air of impending action about him, the sense of an urge to move, to do something. It wasn’t all uncontrolled danger, but there was a lot of that, too. He had, however, shown interest in his own family.

He looked sideways at her and grunted.

“I’ve literally never seen Itachi in there but apparently he dropped in.”

There was a second’s pause, and then Madara gave a soft snort of half-actualised laughter. “Sasuke’s being a brat about it anyway.”

“Sasuke’s a brat about everything,” Sakura pointed out, but then Hidan finally slammed the door shut behind him and they were on the road again.

About ten minutes later there was a shift of canvas and a sudden, frightened yelp from the back of the van.

All of them turned.

“Shit,” said a total stranger, who was wrapped in one of Kisame’s tarpaulins and staring at them from over the divide. “ _Shit_!”

And then he flailed around in the back of the van, kicked one of the back doors open, and threw himself out just as Madara slammed on the breaks.

Sakura didn’t have to kill the engine and get out of the driver’s seat, or awkwardly scoot anywhere. She was the first out, quick and agile, and she lunged for their unexpected passenger even as he moved to flee.

She grabbed his arm and threw her body weight into hauling him backwards -- not directly, because he was too big and he’d never budge that way, but using his own momentum to put a spin on his movements she could knock his ankle out from under him with her foot.

There was a scuffle of sneakers on dirt, an expressive yelp, and one of his hands smacked Sakura’s shoulder clumsily --

“Shit, shit, shit --" He went down onto his butt and scrambled in the dirt for a second, dragging himself awkwardly away from Sakura. “Shit!”

Then he fetched up against a pair of legs.

“Ah,” Madara leaned down and set his hands on the man’s shoulders. “Did the small girl scare you?” he asked with a mean smile.

“There’s a _dead girl_ in the back of your car,” their stowaway said, looking distinctly wild-eyed.

“Ah, shit,” muttered Hidan. Sakura couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.

She swallowed. Whatever happened next was not going to be pretty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, drop me a comment and let me know what you liked.


	33. Chapter 33

“Should we really be standing in the middle of the road?” 

Sakura asked nervously, looking between Madara and their white-faced stowaway. 

That was when Hidan shook off whatever stunned stupor had descended upon him. “You little _shit_ ,” he snarled, wild-eyed, and stalked forward. “What the fuck were you doing in the back of my goddamn van?”

He drew back one foot. Sakura glanced away and winced at the meaty percussive noise it made when Hidan kicked him. 

“Ow, shit, _ow_ , don’t kick me –”

“You’ll be lucky if that’s all that happens to you.” Madara’s voice was insinuating, ominous and mean with the edge of his temper. 

“Ugh,” Hidan muttered. “If I beat the shit out of him, he probably won’t even remember –”

Sakura cringed. Memory loss via head trauma wasn’t what you'd call an exact art, and Hidan was… enthusiastic. “Okay, no, we have to think about this properly,” she said loudly over him. 

Hidan swore and spat. Madara looked equally annoyed, but seemed to reluctantly allow that she was pretty much right.

The stowaway gave her a short, unsettled look. He had an asymmetrical hair cut that had grown out too long, until the fringe that had probably looked cute if a little emo was somewhere around his jaw and ragged, covering almost half of his face. It was a good face: straight nose, strong cheekbones, lips a little thin. Sakura hated the idea that they might end up hurting him just for picking the wrong vehicle to hitch a ride with.

She made an annoyed noise. “You know, if you’d asked for a ride like a normal hitchhiker we’d have said no and none of this would be happening.”

He gave her a singularly foul look, but ground his teeth and said nothing – and then he was distracted again, because Hidan was suddenly groping him. 

He thrashed and yelled, flailing his arms awkwardly. “What the hell, get off–” 

“Stay still, you dumb fucking heathen, I’m not going to _fuck_ you, you stupid shit –”

For some reason, that just made him flail harder. Madara started to laugh, a hair-raising, loud noise that made Sakura feel cold all over. 

_“Uh,”_ said Sakura. 

“Ha!” Hidan came up victorious with a battered phone in a cheap case and a worn leather wallet. Okay, that was a ...a _little_ less disturbing. 

“Kou…tsuki?” Hidan read, squinting his reddish eyes at the card he’d pulled out.

“ _Kamizuki_ ,” corrected the young man. “Where the hell did you learn to read?”

“Shut up,” Hidan growled, flushing red across his cheeks. Sakura knew it was embarrassment, but honestly, with Hidan, humiliation could turn to rage in about three seconds. 

She was a little surprised when, scowling, he shoved the wallet at her. She looked at the name. “Kamizuki Izumo…” and then she looked at the identical photograph in the next ID, and the completely different name. And age. Huh. “And Hagane Kotetsu?” she wondered, raising her eyebrows. “Why do you have two IDs?

She wasn’t stupid. She knew why people had more than one ID – although why they might have chosen to put them both in the same place in the same wallet was a little more baffling. She pursed her lips. 

“None of your business. Give it back.” 

She ignored him. Really, not getting his fake IDs back was the least of his worries at this point. They still had to figure out a way to ensure he wouldn’t be making any awkward reports about the body cooling its heels in their van.

“There aren’t any contacts on this piece of shit,” Hidan said, licking his teeth. 

Madara made an inquisitive noise and plucked it from Hidan’s hands. 

“Hey! I was reading that.”

“Very slowly,” Madara agreed, thumbing through the smart phone’s information at a much greater speed. “No contacts, no social media accounts… most recent text was three days ago… Interesting. Now, what’s an adult doing with two fake IDs and a prepaid mobile phone with no contacts? You’re clearly over twenty, you’re not using them to get into bars…”

“Yeah,” said Sakura, “but he wasn’t even a little bit careful with the IDs, and the body really startled him –”

“It’s a body,” Kamizuki interjected incredulously. 

He was ignored.

“Runaway,” said Hidan disgustedly, turning his face. 

Sakura opened her mouth to wonder how somebody got to be a ‘runaway’ when he was at least in his early twenties, but she shut it again quickly after. That just meant that it wasn’t a home or an orphanage from which he was running. There were lots of things you could be running from.

She resolved not to wonder about it, because honestly she didn’t want to have any sympathy for Kamizuki. If she let that happen, it’d be a lot harder to ignore it if – when, even – Hidan and Madara decided to do something awful to him.

“If that’s true, he’s unlikely to go to the police –”

“You know what would make it really damn hard to go to the police,” Hidan interjected. 

“It’s not necessary. I’m sure we can come to some sort of… agreement,” Madara suggested thoughtfully.

“We don’t have to kill him,” Hidan pointed out. “Head trauma always makes it hard to remember shit around the time of the event. It’d be easy–” he smacked one fist into his palm, looking much too cheerful.

Madara was starting to look sincerely fed up – more with Hidan than with the whole situation at this point.

It happened so quickly that it wasn’t until it was over that Sakura even really understood. Kamizuki was clearly just as piss-terrified of Madara and Hidan as any sane person would be in his situation – she understood that much.

What Sakura had not figured into her assessment was that she was miles less threatening than those other two. 

When Kamizuki managed to inch away while the other two were bickering, he was still surrounded on all sides – and he picked the weakest side to rush. 

“Shit!” Hidan yelped.

Sakura saw him spring forward, lunging toward her – aiming past her, she’d realise later – and she reacted in precisely the way she’d been learning with Kakashi: she tripped him, and slammed the heel of her hand into his nose while he was going down.

There was a loud and completely hideous crunching noise. 

Kamizuki slumped over on top of her, instant dead weight.

“Oh, uh,” she shoved at him, trying to free herself of his weight. He was actually very heavy, warm and loose-limbed. 

She staggered a little. She could feel something wet seeping through the shoulder of her shirt and she thought his nose was probably bleeding. 

“Um, little help?”

Madara hauled him back off her by the hair one-handed. Sakura peered awkwardly down at her shirt. Yep, definitely leaking. It wasn’t a huge stain - no worse than she got on herself these days, but she was seriously starting to run short of clothing that wasn’t torn or bloodied.

Madara was inspecting Kamizuki’s face. “Ah,” he said.

Sakura was busy inspecting her own bloodied hand with a really disgusted expression, but she looked up because Hidan whistled appreciatively into the silence, and that was… ominous. “Wh…” she stopped. 

Kamizuki’s face was a mess. There was a bloody pulped… thing… where his nose was meant to be, and the skin all around his eyes had gone purple-black with the sudden rush of blood under the surface. He was unresponsive, and from the way Madara was grimly propping him up so he could shove one hand beneath his jaw to feel out a pulse…

“Oh, shit,” whispered Sakura.

“Holy shit,” said Hidan, in a very different tone – delighted surprise rather than horror.

“Is he –?”

Madara made an aggrieved noise, shaking hair out of his eyes. He scowled down at Kamizuki like he’d never seen something so irritating. “His heart’s beating.”

Sakura gingerly inched closer to see for herself what that really meant, but she already knew it wasn’t good. From the look of his nose and eyes, she’d caused serious damage to the nasal and orbital bones. They’d kind of… crunched inward. He didn’t open his eyes or even move in response to pain and wouldn’t make any noises.

He was already bleeding, and the rate of blood loss wasn’t exactly small – and Sakura wasn’t sure about putting pressure on the injury because it seemed pretty likely to cause more damage to his brain. 

They were miles and miles from the nearest town, and even further from the nearest hospital – and she didn’t even want to consider how many hospitals were actually equipped to manage traumatic brain injuries like this.

She stared stupidly. 

What did she do? She didn’t even know what to for first aid. He was going to bleed to death pretty fast unless they put pressure on a broken skull, which she was pretty sure was a bad idea.

Shit. _Shit._ He was going to _die,_ what–

Hidan smacked her over the head. “Sa-ku-ra,” he sighed, in a tone that suggested he’d been saying it for a while.

She blinked.

“I said,” Madara drawled, in a tightly controlled voice that made her feel a little queasy, “is there a decent chance he’ll live?”

Sakura shook her head. “I… no, not if he doesn’t regain consciousness. And if the bones’ve gone into his brain –”

“They definitely have,” Madara assured her. He looked at the face and then shot Sakura a look that was a delicate balance of annoyed and condescending.

She swallowed. “–um, if the bones have gone into his brain, he’s probably… and this far out, it’ll take a while for anybody to get to him even if we call an ambulance…”

“So if you had to place a bet, you’d say he was going to die?”

“Oh. The chances of him surviving are… really small.”

“Good,” said Madara flatly.

And then he dropped the body just off the road – Sakura flinched at the sound it made – and headed back for the van.

“…are you just going to leave him there?” Sakura asked incredulously, not moving from the spot. 

“No,” said Madara in a growl, “ _we_ are.”

“Er,” said Sakura, looking back at the slumped and bleeding form. “But –”

The driver’s door slammed.

She twitched. 

Hidan took her by the elbow and pulled her toward the van. She felt like it was her first night in the house all over again: blood, shock, and Hidan’s surprising, overwhelming strength. It just wasn’t a goat this time.

She swallowed hard. This time, she went willingly. 

“Somebody is going to find him and we’re all going to get arrested,” she blurted.

Hidan frowned at her. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Yes!“ She gave him an incredulous look. “I can’t get a medical license with a _murder conviction_ , Hidan.”

He snorted. “You won’t have a murder conviction. Even when somebody finds the body and calls it in, you’re looking at a kid with a fake ID and a phone with no contacts in it. There wasn’t anything about where he was going, no recent calls, no linked social media – either nobody knew he was hitchhiking – runaway, remember? – or he was up to some dodgy shit to start with.”

“So? Won’t they – I don’t know, we’ve definitely left, um, fingerprints or something–”

Madara overheard this just as Hidan was hustling her into the back of the van and sliding in alongside her, and he gave a humourless snort of laughter. “If the police were that well-funded, I’d be working for them.”

“What?”

“They won’t try to get prints. It’s costly and there’s a queue miles long. There’s no point, unless they’re pretty sure they’ll come up with something. And even if they did, yours wouldn’t come up – you’re not in the system. Let’s get out of here and try to keep it that way.”

“Wait, you– are you saying you can just kill someone and then leave him there and nothing will happen?” 

She glanced nervously over her shoulder and into the rear window, watching the road with its body slumped, forlorn and bleeding. It was actually not that easily picked out: flashes of drab clothing from between the long grasses. Given how little-travelled this road was, and how fast they were able to go… it might take quite a long time before anybody noticed the body.

“What do you think is going to happen? How could anybody possibly associate what happened back there with us?” Madara sneered.

Sakura bit her lip, thinking furiously. Maybe if somebody had seen when they‘d stopped–? But then, well, it wasn‘t like anybody was looking, and Kamizuki was definitely trying to avoid the attention anyway, so– “I guess…”

And then a moment later: "Okay, but-”

“No,” Madara cut her off. What was left of his temper seemed to fray, and he swore quietly, shooting a venomous look her way. “I thought I’d have to watch Hidan for random casualties, not you,” he snarled, taking a curve of their winding road too fast. “The least you can do is avoid whining about it.”

"I really didn’t mean to,” she said weakly. But that didn’t mean anything. She was well aware that there were some things intentions didn’t help. Killing a guy? Definitely one of them. 

“And that’s _tremendously_ helpful.” Madara snapped. 

Sakura could see his hands, white-knuckled on the wheel, and she swallowed. He was frightening enough when he was smiling and perving on other people’s discomfort. 

He made a low, pissed off noise and Sakura flinched. When he was actually angry, Madara made her feel exactly the same way she felt when Deidara lit a match and yelled ‘HEY, WATCH THIS’.

Hidan clicked his tongue at him, for all the world like someone’s chiding parent, and slung one arm companionably over Sakura’s shoulder. It put some of his pale hair in a spot where it tickled her ear, and after a second of remaining frozen and watching the tense set of Madara’s shoulders in the driver’s seat, she relaxed at least enough to brush it away. 

His hair smelled familiar, weirdly. She breathed in again, distracted. Actually, Hidan smelled pretty much identical to Sakura’s pillow.

…probably because he was an asshole who napped in her bed when his was bloody. Goddammit, Hidan.

Sakura was busy thinking. Was she seriously sure the guy was even going to die? She thought he was, but she wasn’t a proper doctor. She was a first year, for heaven’s sake. Was she condemning him to a preventable death if she didn’t call an ambulance?

“It’s fine,” Hidan assured her, drawing her in close.

Sakura was sure – intellectually sure – that his chances were negligibly small, but there was a hot, guilty squirming in her gut that made her question. 

“He’s been given to Jashin-sama. It’s better for him than living as a dumb little shithead, and honestly it’s better for you. Jashin-sama takes care of those who engender death.”

Here he lapsed into that strange, ominous language that Sakura could never quite recall properly, although this prayer - whichever it was - was a great deal calmer-sounding than many of the others she’d heard over time. Maybe it was for the dead or something. There was a rhythmic quality to it, and since Sakura couldn’t figure out what he was actually saying, she wasn’t upset or offended by it. 

Also, her brain reminded her helpfully, as though it had noticed the brief moment where she wasn’t hyper alert with guilty anxiety there, Sakura had killed someone. 

Accidentally. But he wasn’t any less dead. Or… soon-to-be-dead.

She swallowed.

That was, like, literally the opposite of what she’d intended to do with herself. Sakura had never felt like so much of a failure before. 

“–Are you even listening to me?”

“I am, actually,” she said with bland and artificial calm. “It’s nice. Keep going.” 

Hidan eyed her like he expected a trick, and then when she just looked back at him and blinked, he gave her a smile that was all childlike happiness. 

And then he just… kept going. It _was_ kind of nice. Weird.

And it left Sakura free to think, to sink more deeply into shock. She didn’t feel well. 

The rest of the drive was a nightmare - listening to Hidan’s recitation was one of the better things about it, and even Madara didn’t seem to mind this one because he embraced the relative calm. He drove fast and in silence. Sakura’s heart thumped in her chest and nerves twisted her guts. She was restless and had too many feelings all at once.

Eventually she thumped her head back on Hidan’s shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’t stop his murmured prayers at all. It was some twenty minutes later that she was partially roused from a fitful doze because he stopped and actual silence descended. She had no interest in talking, so she didn’t bother to open her eyes or lift her head. Jashin this, Jashin that. She’d avoid that for as long as she could.

“I’m surprised,” murmured Madara aloud, low enough not to wake her if she’d actually still been asleep. “Sakura-chan seemed much more concerned with being caught than killing. Do you think there’s any chance she’ll have an attack of conscience and tell someone?”

Hidan grunted to indicate his attention but didn’t move otherwise. 

It took him a while to actually say anything. “Deidara, or maybe Itachi.” 

Madara made an annoyed noise. “Itachi could be a problem,” he mused. “He’s got a weak stomach.”

Hidan scoffed. “He crawls into bed with Hoshigaki. He’s got a cast-fucking-iron stomach, he’s just a filthy goddamn heathen. But he likes her. Calls her by her first name and everything. He’ll make something up to justify it to himself.”

Madara snorted softly but didn’t actually make any effort to disagree with Hidan’s characterisation of Itachi. “So she won’t report it.”

“And get the rest of us in the shit? No. She won’t.”

“Hmm,” said Madara. “You’re awfully confident.”

“Okay, well,“ she could almost feel Hidan rolling his eyes, “if you don’t want my opinion, don’t fucking ask for it.”

Sakura stayed with her head tipped back, listening quietly to them talking about her. 

She’d had no idea that had even been a concern. Nobody had warned her off reporting anything since they’d made her set the explosives in that empty warehouse. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to plant the idea, but… 

…it was really weird to think of Hidan as being any kind of judge of character, actually. 

The issue with feigning sleep was, of course, pretending to wake. Sakura, feeling tired and sick to her stomach and a little prickled by their conversation, got around this by going back to sleep. 

She woke for real when Hidan shoved her unceremoniously from his shoulder. Their van was still moving, but slowly now, through traffic, and the sky was darkening. “Ow,” she said, although there wasn’t much feeling behind it. 

Madara hurled a pile of cloth at her face. She blinked, and realised it was an oversized hoodie. “Hood up, head down. You’re staying in the van. If we’re lucky nobody’ll even know you were there – but if we’re not, I don’t want them seeing your face. Stay still,” he added imperiously.

Sakura blinked. Then, understanding, she scrambled to pull the hoodie over her head. It swamped her, evidently being made for somebody much larger. On the front was a scratched up logo for the ‘Innsmouth Water Polo Team’, which meant nothing to Sakura.

She didn’t bother trying to recognise the city they were in now. She was tired, hungry, anxious and sick-feeling all at once, and she was stiff and cold from sitting around doing nothing for hours. Quietly, she helped Hidan roll their ill-gotten cadaver into a sheet of tarp for easy transport.

When the van finally slowed, it was in a residential district with a lot of big gates and more cars than houses – money, she assumed, and decided that she was pretty content to stay still and silent while the others sorted the exchange out. 

The exchange, when it occurred, was so quick and smooth that it was a complete anticlimax for Sakura. She didn’t move when Madara threw the back of the van open and hauled out their product. It wasn’t shown to a single person, as she’d expected, but rather a small group of men in rumpled suits and lazily tied yukata. It seemed to meet with their expectations, although there was some murmuring and comparison to – something. It wasn’t really her business, but she thought as she tilted her hooded head back against the van’s interior that they might have been comparing the face to a photograph. 

That was a creepy thought. She was glad the woman was dead – or at least glad that the dead woman wasn’t a live woman, so she didn’t have to feel guilty about delivering her over to these very, very strange men. 

There wasn’t any real issue, though, and the body was accepted with – as far as she could tell from the muffled commentary – equanimity. She listened quietly while Hidan stood over them and presided directly over a complicated transfer of money.

Then, abruptly and without ceremony, Madara jumped back into the driver’s seat, Hidan heaved himself into the back and the doors slammed shut – and they were off, driving through the darkened city again, van humming under them. 

Sakura felt a brief pang in her stomach - nervousness, an adrenalin spike, short but intense – when they began to move, but she was grateful to find that it faded pretty fast. The feel of a moving vehicle beneath her was really never going to be quite the same following that horrible incident with Sai.

“Minor complication aside,” Madara murmured, “that actually went well. I have confirmation from Itachi that the security footage at the hospital has been – whatever it is he does to it. Corrupted or looped or something,” he shrugged one shoulder.

“I can’t believe I went to all this fucking trouble for Deidara,” Hidan bitched, leaning back. 

Sakura rolled her eyes, but her mind was otherwise occupied. It had been hours. Kamizuki was definitely dead.

Well. That was… Sakura had never in her life felt so unsettled about any one issue.

As soon as they were out of town, Madara swapped out with Hidan and banished Sakura to the front of the van so he could nap in the back. 

Outside the traffic and other people in the city, Hidan wasn’t that much of a terror – he, unlike Deidara, at least understood that technically it was preferable to slow down for sharp turns.

It was a lot easier to think about Deidara. “Is it going to be suspicious, us paying out the bail with sudden surprise money?” she wondered.

“Orochimaru’ll deal with it,” shrugged Hidan. “I’m not really interested in the money stuff.”

Sakura nodded slowly. 

Orochimaru was rude, obnoxious, smugly superior and just plain weird, but she found that she had a surprising degree of faith in his professional competence. Maybe he’d be able to help if anybody found out about Kamizuki…

Sakura’s stomach twisted. 

Right, now she was back to thinking about the dead guy. She sighed restlessly.

“What,“ said Hidan flatly. It didn’t even sound like a question, just an annoyed outburst. 

“Hey,” she said suddenly, thinking of Hidan’s earlier attempt to read Kamizuki’s name… He didn’t read much, actually. Didn’t read much, wasn’t interested in money stuff, regarded Kakuzu’s obsession with figures and numbers as something between absurd mysticism and actual magic – and Sakura wasn’t sure, but she got the impression he’d been working with Madara for a long damn time. He wasn’t that old, either. “Did you go to school?”

“...what?” Hidan turned his head to squint at her, but returned his face toward the road after a second. “Why are you asking?” he demanded.

“…curious?” she suggested. He eyed her from the corner of his eye for a few long moments. “I went to school,” he said. “I was shit at it. Or not interested. Or both. I dropped out.” 

“Okay,” she said, and decided not to ask again. Obviously it wasn’t his favourite topic. But she still desperately wanted a distraction. Well, there was one surefire way to keep Hidan walking: “What prayer was that?”

He brightened. “Mourning Verse. It’s about the cessation of suffering and the return to Jashin-sama–”

He kept talking, and with an even half-interested audience, it went on for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited and formatted on my phone, so if there are typos or formatting mistakes let me know so I can fix them. Annnnd if you liked something, let me know because wow today has been so long. @_@


	34. Chapter 34

They made it back to the sharehouse in the early hours. Sakura took her cue from Hidan when he shrugged and told Sasori that everything had gone off without a hitch.

"No problem," she agreed blandly when he glanced at her. "Although I could use about six showers and a twelve hour nap."

Whether or not she was a convincing liar took a back seat to Sasori's willingness to take this at face value - he nodded and continued without reflecting very hard on the matter. My contact confirmed receipt with me,' he said without further questioning. "The money's been transferred, although it will need to be cleaned before we can use it. Especially for something like this. I'll have it done soon."

'Soon' could have meant pretty much anything, especially about money, and especially with Kakuzu absent. Sasori wasn't known for his patience, either, and she suspected that, ironically, that could slow the process down, too.

Still, it wasn't as though there was a lot more that Sakura could do to help.

 _You've already done plenty_ , drawled a voice, soft but angry-hot and mean in her head. It sounded a lot like herself. She ignored it.

"Good luck," she said instead.

Sakura got her shower, although it was a lot quicker than she'd hoped for - Hidan was friendly enough to let her go first, but also impatient enough to pound on the door and yell at her ten minutes later.

"It's fucking four in the morning, Sakura! Hurry up!"

She turned the water off just in time to hear Sasori's voice - "If you're aware it's four in the morning _why are you screaming_?"

She wrapped herself in a towel before she shoved her head through the crack of the door. "There's another shower downstairs," she reminded Hidan, catching him just as he opened his mouth to respond to Sasori at top volume.

Steam wafted from the damp warmth of the bathroom, carrying soapy smells and cooling as it escaped.

He scowled fiercely "All my stuff's in here," he complained.

Sakura raised her eyebrows. There was a lot of stuff in that bathroom, but she'd assumed most of it was Deidara's, because he smelled expensive and his hair was the nicest. Although Hidan's hair was still way nicer than hers, so...

Somewhere from the vicinity of the stair well, Sasori scoffed and retreated, returning to his lair to do whatever he did when Hidan wasn't being too noisy - presumably either to figure out laundering money or to create more mechanised dead animals, neither of which Sakura was very interested in.

"It's all yours," Sakura said, leaving the door wide open and scooping up her clothes. The towel was firmly in place, but Hidan wasn't even trying to catch a look - he was too busy yanking his shirt over his head and unbutton his p -

"Wow, okay, hang on," yelped Sakura, scampering away and trying not to think about the view on display. Why did Hidan have to be so ungodly... mesomorphic. Yes. That was a good word. Nice and clinical sounding.

It wasn't like she hadn't already seen it all before - _all of it, thank you Hidan_ \- but...

She left damp footprints on the floorboards as she retreated to her room. Hidan's smug laughter followed her. Bastard.

Sleep, despite her desire for it, was almost impossible. She thought over and over of the runaway on the roadside. She resented him powerfully and hated herself by turns - why stowing away? Why not ask for a lift like a normal person? But then what had he done for her to respond with such a powerful, unnecessary violence? She could have moved away, she could have tried to immobilise him, could have relied upon Hidan or Madara - Hell, she could have let him go. Surely that would have been the better outcome. Surely.

And then, even as the sky moved from dark to glossy deep periwinkle and blushed pinkish at the edges, Sakura couldn't help the chill thought: what if she got caught? Oh, Hidan and Madara wouldn't tell the authorities, but there must be other ways to know. And who knew who they _would_ tell? By trusting both of them with this, she was presumably also leaving herself open to everybody they trusted.

And then once Sakura was in the grip of such suspicion, paranoia found and overwhelmed her. She dwelt upon Kamizuki's lack of identification and contacts. Was he really a runaway? Or was he a Black Ops plant? A part of another group entirely? Or worse - some kind of law enforcement?

 _He could have been anything_ , said that tiny voice, _but he's nothing now_. And it laughed.

Sakura ignored it. She couldn't actually deal with hearing voices right now. She had enough on her plate. And honestly it was probably stress - it would probably go away soon.

Her thoughts were so paranoid as to be ridiculous. These things were distant and very, very slender possibilities. But they resounded in her skull, repeating on themselves and spinning in violent circles like a werewolf chasing its tail.

Eventually she tired of tossing and turning and got up. Six in the morning and her without a wink of sleep - but TRIVIA wouldn't open itself, for one, and it wasn't like dwelling on it was doing her any good.

She finally remembered to turn her phone back on once she was already on the bus, and was immediately met with yesterday's texts:

<From: U. Sasuke

Timestamp: 3:53 PM

Text body: I'm not doing it again.>

 

<From: PIG

Timestamp: 4:35 PM

Text body: singedwall . jpg.>

 

<From: PIG

Timestamp: 4:37 PM

Text body: Whoops.>

 

<From: PIG

Timestamp: 4:37 PM

Text body: TIL hairspray is even more flammable than you'd think. Related news: I'm moving dorm rooms. Nothing important (i.e., my stuff) was harmed in the making of this small fire.>

 

<From: Inuzuka Kiba

Timestamp: 5:53 PM

Text body: spending that much time in an enclosed space with Sasuke is seriously traumatic. when are you back? how long does a pap smear even take? ...what even is a pap smear?>

 

<From: Inuzuka Kiba

Timestamp: 5:55 PM

Text body: i googled it, that's gross. .>

 

<From: Inuzuka Kiba

Timestamp: 5:59 PM

Text body: anyway Sasuke's not really cut out for customer service. or any kind of service, if you think about it>

 

<From: Inuzuka Kiba

Timestamp: 5:59 PM

Text body: ...or being a customer. maybe just ban him from cafes. ban him from everywhere.>

 

<From: Uchiha Itachi

Timestamp: 4:03 AM

Message body: Please let me know when you've returned safely.>

 

There were several, and aside from the genuinely alarming photo message sent to her from Ino - which showed a wall that had been singed black in the middle, what the _hell_ \- the only one she really cared to respond to was Itachi's.

She had no idea why he was texting her at four in the morning, but she shot a message back to let him know when she'd gotten through the front door.

TRIVIA was still her responsibility for the time being. It was still dark when she arrived, with the sky low and only just beginning to turn blue around the edges. Inside the cafe was icy cold, attributable to the concrete floors. The crates were stacked neatly atop their tables and the floor had been hosed and mopped.

She hit the lights, flooding the place with warm light and blinking in the sudden change. Everything went from monochrome and silhouettes to bright colour, revealing the pretty origami strung from the ceiling.

In the light, Sakura could see that there was a stack of paperwork on the bench beside the coffee machine. The topmost thing was a yellow sticky note written in jagged, narrow writing. Sasuke wrote that the till was mysteriously up when he counted up at the end of the day - which meant they'd probably overcharged someone, but, hey, Sakura would take that over it being mysteriously _down_ any day.

Beneath that, in print-perfect handwriting, was another note -

_Haruno-kun,_

_That idiot has left no return date. In light of the time he's been gone, you may need these records_.

It was from _Orochimaru_ , of all people. Sakura paged through the bulky folder and discovered that she was now privy to significantly more financial information about the business than she ever wanted to be.

She was fairly certain that providing this kind of information to her without _somebody's_ say-so was illegal, but what did she know? Possibly Orochimaru even owned part of the cafe. She scratched her head. She couldn't make heads or tails of half of these, although she put aside the correspondence and invoices from the deliveries people. That would need to be organised really soon, and at least she might get some idea of what she was meant to do by reading over those. She wondered if she'd be able to get Kakuzu to help her when he returned - he _had_ left a return date, after all. For a price, probably. She was pretty sure she could get Kakuzu to do anything for a price. But maybe she shouldn't show him?

That reminded her that she needed to remind Sasori to pay rent. And Deidara, somehow. Or would Deidara...

She put the page she was looking at down and rubbed her hands through her hair.

Dammit. Everything was a mess and she had so much to do.

"Are you opening?" somebody called from the doorway, and Sakura looked up. She had to learn to make coffee, too. Maybe Kiba would show her later today? Yeah, that sounded about right.

"We are," she said, slapping on a smile. "Although not for another twenty minutes. You can come back, or you're welcome to sit down and wait while we get set up." She shoved the folder under the counter, in the weird dark no man's land between the top of the milk fridge and the underside of the bench upon which rested the coffee machine. She'd deal with it later.

The bypasser in question smiled back and decided to settle in to wait, so Sakura got the crates down and made sure she had water for the time being. Hopefully Kiba would be mysteriously early today.

And... that was how Sakura went back to her life.

Having overheard Hidan's conversation with Madara made her, perversely, not want to talk to Itachi about her... _accident_... with Kamizuki at all. That left her with a dearth of sympathetic and sane people to discuss it with, however.

Instead when Kiba came in she apologised for imprisoning him with Sasuke, and smiled and prepared food and handed over change and made small talk with customers.

Later that evening she emailed her mother and told her about exams, about work at the cafe and how her hair was growing out again. She told her that she'd taken up running under duress. She even told her that one of her housemates had made a robot out of a taxidermy cat, and how weird and disturbing that was. She did not tell her mother that she'd smuggled a body and killed someone.

She thanked Sasuke and bought the coffee Sasori requested.

She checked in with Tenten to remind her not to climb in through the window, which was a request that continued to be heard and ignored.

It was appalling to think that she could kill somebody, leave a body by the side of a lonely road, and then just go home and get on with it.

But life did go on, and she had to keep up.

The next several days were peaceful, and she used them to get caught up with her life. School would start back up in another week or two, and while she was busy with TRIVIA she still had to study and make sure she was as prepared as possible for her next term.

She met up with Kakashi twice during that time, and if she was much more focused on the things he as teaching her - more serious, more interested in their inevitable outcomes - he didn't call her on it. He did take her seriously, though.

"They're all aimed to do serious injury to another person," he said when she asked. "You're aiming for vulnerable areas - eyes, throat, groin - because they're the fastest way to disable an attacker. You _will_ injure them."

"Guess I'd better work on my first aid," she mused, just as Kakashi's biggest and drooliest dog shoved his head happily into her hip, tail ticking madly behind him. She scratched his ears absently.

Kakashi shrugged. "If somebody's attacking you, Sakura, I wouldn't bother."

She nodded, but she thought of Kamizuki and wasn't sure she agreed. Still, no amount of first aid would have helped him.

 _You hope_ , added that extremely unhelpful inner voice.

"So we were talking about knife fights," Kakashi said, dragging her back onto track. As he spoke, the wan autumn light hit his hair and made him look much more venerable than he was and a great deal wiser than Sakura thought necessary. "Obviously your best solution is to get away and get out as fast as possible. A knife fight is dangerous - it's all short movements, it happens fast, and it happens at very close range. If you get involved in a knife fight with someone even halfway competent, you'll get cut up and you'll bleed a lot, and that's a best-case scenario -"

Then again, sometimes Kakashi was very wise. And bleak. Very bleak.

He was a good teacher when he actually put his mind to it.

Sakura still had no idea what he thought he was doing teaching ethics, though.

Sakura wasn't very involved with the process of getting Deidara out of remand on bail, but she arrived home not long after he did.

"Shower," said Sasori. His eyes rolling up toward the ceiling as though he could see Deidara through the floors between them. "He's been there for more than an hour."

It was probably a mark of sympathy that nobody had hauled him out by his hair yet.

Sakura bit her bottom lip, shoving the leftovers from TRIVIA into the fridge. There was a bubbling excitement in her gut - she had not realised how badly she'd wanted Deidara to be _home_ but now he was and -

Decisively, she retrieved some of the leftovers, toed the fridge door shut and took off up the stairs.

The shower was still running when she made it to their floor. Not only had nobody made Deidara get out yet, but Hidan was still locked behind his door, muttering to himself in his darkened and bloodied room like the complete whack-job he was.

Instead of continuing on to her own bedroom door, Sakura leaned against the wall across from the bathroom and waited with her arms crossed across chest.

Only a few moments later, Deidara emerged from the room still damp and dreamy-eyed, flushed from heat. His hair was dark with water and it clung wetly to his skin. He'd pulled a pair of paint-stained trousers on, and a towel was slung over his shoulders.

On impulse, Sakura darted forward and threw her arms around his neck and shoulders. His skin was hot from the water, and he smelled like something chemical and acid and floral shampoo.

"Whoa," said Deidara, but it was only a surprised second before he reached up and wound his arms around her, too. He ran his fingers through her hair. "Are you all right?"

She shoved her face against his shoulder. "You idiot, I should be asking you that."

"Me? I'm fine, yeah. See?" he took a step back and she released him, and then he tossed his towel over one arm and spun around so she could see he was completely uninjured. Or, well... that the only injuries he had were a couple of bruises. That, at least, was no worse than any of the injuries he got while he was making an idiot of himself at home with Hidan.

Sakura reached out and ran one thumb over a bruise on his shoulder blade thoughtfully. The muscles on either side of his spine tensed and his shoulder twitched, but he let her do it.

She laid her hand flat on his skin. This was what she'd wanted, so -

After a second he shrugged her off, turned back toward her and reached for the towel on his head, rubbing it through his hair as he moved. "Come on," he said, tugging her by one arm toward his room. "Come here."

"I brought leftovers," she managed when he kicked the door shut after himself.

"Room temperature beer and TRIVIA leftovers," said Deidara, rolling a dusty but sealed bottle from beneath his overflowing desk with one foot. He reached down and grabbed a second before offering the first to Sakura. "Dinner of champions."

"Sounds about right," she agreed blithely, and let went looking for a bottle opener. There was one on Deidara's keyring - she remembered them being given out at university as part of some awareness-raising safe-sex campaign. This one said 'STAY NEGATIVE' and, more importantly, opened bottles. "Do you have, um, a time when you have to go to court, or-?"

"I don't think criminal law is as organised as people think it is, yeah. Said they'll be in contact." Deidara shrugged. Then he flashed her a quick grin. "Ne, Orochimaru-sensei said you found fifty k on pretty short notice. With _Hidan_."

Annnd now she was thinking about it again. She licked her lips. "Yeah," she agreed. "It was a... weird job."

Deidara's nose wrinkled. "You wouldn't usually have to do extra work for it. I hope Konan gets back soon," he muttered, which, yeah. Didn't they all? "Was it... okay?"

Sakura sucked on her teeth and then took another sip of her beer. It would have been better served cold, because there'd have been less opportunity to taste its thin bitterness. Or maybe Sakura just wasn't cut out to be a beer drinker.

"I hit a guy in the nose, broke his entire face and left him for dead on the road," she admitted aloud. It came out unexpectedly. The end of the final word hung in the air, sharp and final.

It felt... weirdly good, that. Saying it aloud. Madara had been cranky and dismissive, and Hidan had been somehow pleased - she recognised that now, that his coddling her hadn't been because it was scary and terrible and he wanted to help her, but rather because he was blissfully satisfied with the outcome - but neither of them had been even remotely interested in acknowledging that she'd... well, really _killed_ someone.

It wasn't a big deal for them. Which should have been more of a red flag than it was these days, shouldn't it? It wasn't actually that unexpected. Not really.

Her housemates had, since the beginning, not been terribly fussy about the idea of seriously injuring or killing somebody. And Sakura supposed that now she knew _exactly_ what had happened to the previous occupant of her room.

She rubbed her free hand through her hair.

It had been naive of her to think otherwise. She wasn't sure why she'd let herself do that for so long. She'd been living among killers from the start, and part of her had known it. And now... well, now she was one, too.

When she looked back up from her contemplation of her darkened bottle of cheap beer, Deidara was slumped in his own desk chair across from her. There were powders and bits of ground up minerals and solvents scattered across his desk, and a tangle of wires beneath it.

He was holding on to his shirt but he hadn't put it on yet, completely ignoring the bright fabric in favour of contemplating her through a spill of soft damp hair.

Most of Deidara's smiles were fun and a little wicked, or if they were angry ones they were mean and mocking. The one he had now was a weary curl of his mouth, sympathetic, strangely sweet.

"For me?" Deidara tilted his head. "I'm flattered."

Sakura nodded uncertainly.

His expression went soft for a second. "Thank you," he said seriously.

There was a moment's silence.

"Now pretend it never, ever happened and don't mention it again, yeah."

Since that had pretty much been her plan to start with, she was okay with this. "Yeah," she nodded.

Hours later, Sakura was still perched on Deidara's unmade bed, feeling normal for the first time all week. She wasn't completely surprised when he crawled halfway over her legs and began to doze - it only took two beers for him to get a bit sleepy, which was adorable and would no doubt be a topic of some ridicule among the others.

Deidara made an attractive study when he was asleep, even when he did it with his face buried in the pillow next to the outside of her thigh. He had unfairly lovely hair, and with his shirt on Sakura couldn't see the bruises - just the outline of his shoulderblades pressed against the fabric and the easy broadness of his shoulders. He was also warm, and made a heavy weight upon her legs.

Sakura amused herself for an hour or so playing games on her phone with the sound turned off, but the soft sounds of Deidara's breathing and the comforting smell of him and the heavy warmth of him made her equally sleepy. She set her phone on the floor next to the bed and, instead of getting up and going to her own bed, she let herself drift off as he'd done.

* * *

 

Sakura woke to footsteps and a hushed argument outside in the hall. 'Hushed' was not generally how arguments were conducted in this house, and that was almost more ominous than the argument itself.

"'S for you," sighed Deidara, who had migrated in the night now dozed with his face buried in her belly. His hair tickled, and she gathered it up in one hand and tossed it in a pile over his shoulders where it belonged. Then her hand sort of just stayed there and she ran her fingers through his hair, combing through it while she tried to listen.

Sakura frowned at Deidara's cracked, smoke-stained ceiling. All she could really hear was the soft hiss of whispers trying not to attract too much attention outside.

Then, more expectedly, there was the sound of a scuffle. She could actually pick the specific sounds out: that squeak was a sneaker on the floors, that particular dull thump was somebody hitting the wall - but not with their head, perhaps their back - and that slam was -

There was a yelp and a crash, and then a distinctly familiar feminine voice: "What is wrong with these people?" Okay, so that was Tenten breaking in again.

"It is possible that they don't enjoy you climbing in through their windows." And Neji. Oh.

"It has a door," Tenten protested mildly.

Sakura relaxed back into the bed, wondering if she could hide from the pair of them in here. She wasn't sure she wanted to go running. (Sakura was almost never sure she wanted to go running.)

Absently, she scraped her nails over Deidara's scalp. He melted against her completely with a low, rumbling sigh. " _Mmm._ "

That sound made her shiver from head to toe. The weight of him hadn't actually changed, but she was suddenly extremely aware of his knee between her calves and the long heavy press of him curled up against her and she realised that, actually, now would be a great time to get out of Deidara's bed and _stop petting him_.

She stopped, and he glanced up at her. His eyes were heavy lidded _with sleep,_ and his hair was a mess because _she'd been playing with it_ but -

Noooo.

A long exhausting run sounded just fine.

She patted his shoulder once, twice.

"I need to get up," she said.

He made a disgusted noise, but he was semi-cooperative in rolling away from her. His sleepy mumbling didn't sound thrilled.

She hauled open the door and stuck her head out. She'd planned to say hi, but -

"Er," said Sakura.

Sakura's bedroom door was open, and halfway across the threshold were Tenten and Zetsu - he on his knees, her behind him with her feet planted and one of his arms caught in her grip. She'd twisted it so all the pressure of his movement, should he make any, would be on his elbow or shoulder. It looked painful.

Tenten's hair was coming out of one of its buns, and there was a growing bruise on her cheek. Neji was leaning against the wall in the corridor, and he was examining a pair of garden shears. There was a cut on his forearm, right where somebody might block to protect their face.

"Hi, Sakura," Tenten said, smiling cheerfully. "Is this your neighbour?"

"Yeah," said Sakura slowly. "Zetsu?"

"Ah, sorry Sakura-san. They woke me up," he said, "and then they were climbing through your window. He has pretty eyes," he added in a much less sanguine voice, and his lips peeled back. "I bet they'd taste-" he wheezed when Tenten put more pressure on his shoulder.

 _Watery and rusty and warm with body heat,_ came to Sakura quickly and disgustingly. Ew. _Eugh._ Gross. No. She swallowed.

"Um, sorry," she said instead of dwelling on that one, "I have tried to get them not to climb in through the window..."

"If you'd said your next door neighbour might attack me," Tenten pointed out, "I'd probably have listened. It seems a shame to wake your housemate."

"Sasori? No, you won't be waking him up," Sakura said, and shook her head. Sasori, to her knowledge, never slept. That was why his entire diet was sort of built up around a core of instant coffee... and also probably why he had such an impatient temper. "Could you let Zetsu-san go now?"

Cautiously, Tenten did, and he scrambled away from her. His eyes drifted to the shears in Neji's hand.

"Why don't we give me the secateurs, and you can come get them from my room later?" she suggested, trying to inject as much sweet reason into her tone as possible. "Once we're gone?"

It took a second, but Zetsu nodded, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

It took Sakura some time to herd them all out. Once she reached the ground floor and stepped outside - _via the goddamn door_ \- herself, she realised that Gai-sensei and Lee were both there, and both brimming with vitality.

She was just really glad they'd decided to stay outside and stretch instead of coming up with Tenten and Neji.

"Made peace with your gods?" Tenten asked cheerfully.

There was a weird second where Sakura honestly thought she was talking about Jashin-sama. After a second she shook it off with a shudder and rolled her eyes as expected. "Let's just get this over with," she said.

"Yosh!" Lee pumped one fist in the air. "That's the attitude! We'll be done in no time." He beamed at her, eyebrows bristling in the first light of morning.

"Mmm-hmm," said Sakura neutrally.

Running was getting easier, although the stint with her busted ankle had affected her fitness for it pretty negatively. She did still remember that first time when she'd spent the whole time gasping violently alongside Tenten in the pre-dawn dark. Now she was running in much longer intervals and doing much less violent gasping, so she could chalk that up as a win.

"You seem better than you have been," Tenten told her bluntly while they were walking together to cool down. "I hope it lasts."

That was Tenten all over, Sakura thought. Forthright and blunt. "Me too," she said, thinking that she probably wouldn't have to kill anybody again soon.

When Sakura got back, the sun was up - they'd started later than usual and it was growing warm with the beginnings of a surprisingly nice day. The walk had warmed her down a little, but she knew she ought to do the thing properly, so even after she gave Tenten a quick (and sweaty) hug goodbye she stayed out to stretch.

She held onto the peeling fence out the front of the house to steady herself while she stretched her legs, ignoring the way it leaned with her if she put too much of her weight on it. It hadn't fallen over yet. It was a nice day, and the Nekketsu Dojo group had left her alone after she'd performed her ritual sacrifice to the exercise gods with them. The peace was actually pretty relaxing.

Deidara appeared, leaning in the doorway of the big old house with a cup of coffee in one hand, laughing at her.

She scowled at him, breathing heavily, and gathered her air before she commented: "Bet I can outrun you."

"I'm sure that'll be really useful, yeah," he mocked.

Sakura flipped him off, but he waited and watched while she stretched, and in the end they headed into the house side by side.

Sakura spent the rest of her day doing little things. She vacuumed, threw on a load of laundry, dug through her preparatory readings for the coming school term and re-read a little Icha Icha. She didn't think about Kamizuki for whole hours at a time.

Zetsu had evidently gotten back to sleep because he didn't return for his shears for hours. When he did they disappeared between one breath and the next and she never even saw him come in. Presumably that meant he wasn't in a mood for company.

And while Sakura was wondering about the shears, she wondered if Neji's cuts had resulted in him feeling drowsy the way Kakashi's had. They hadn't seemed to, but he did look pretty tired following their jog. Maybe Kakashi's had been deeper? It was food for thought.

She called up Ino in the late afternoon to catch up. Ino's most recent visit had been both a balm to her psyche and a gentle remonstration to keep up with her friend better, so she was trying to make more of an effort.

Since it had been such a nice day, she was settled out on her balcony, peering down past he roof and at the scrubby, utterly unmanaged garden area at the side of their house. They had surprising distance between theirs and their neighbours', which was probably to their neighbours' benefit. Sakura was frequently surprised they didn't get more noise complaints.

"Did you really burn her stuff?" Sakura asked almost immediately when the call connected.

"She's such an asshole," Ino complained, which was as good as a yes.

Sakura was briefly but intensely torn between the need to side with Ino - she was her best and earliest friend, and Sakura was almost always willing to side with her out of loyalty even when she was wrong - and the urge to point out that Ino's relationship with her roommate wasn't exactly devoid of asshole behaviour on either side.

The urge passed quickly, though, and she just nodded. "Sounds like it. Are you still getting, uh, calls?"

"For 'hot milf wants super hung boy toy call 4 good time'?" Ino asked drily. "Yeah, sometimes."

Sakura cringed. Her sympathy for the roommate waned considerably at the reminder. "What an awful piece of work."

"She is, completely. I'm so glad I'm moving. Good riddance." Ino made a short, disgusted noise in her throat. "How are you going, anyway? You've seemed pretty... flat, I guess, the last couple days. I mean, it's hard to tell by text, but, well. Yeah. You sound..." She trailed off here uncertainly.

Sakura hesitated. If she wasn't going to tell Itachi, she definitely wasn't going to tell Ino. "I think I had a mild bug or something. I've just been, you know, unsettled, a bit queasy... Nothing serious."

Ino made sympathetic noises. "At least you're on break, mm? Actually, I'm staying with Daddy right now, so I'm much closer than usual. We should catch up while I've got the chance."

Yamanaka Inoichi lived quite close to Sakura's childhood home, so the trip would be a little shorter - three hours by train, maybe two by car if you drove like a maniac (which Ino, she was well aware, certainly did) instead of four. It was worth taking advantage of, probably.

"Yeah, we should," she agreed slowly, even as she was wondering when on earth she'd find the time. She might have been on break, but she felt like she was busy just catching her breath even now. And she had so many things to work out for TRIVIA before she went back...

Sakura's train of thought was derailed by a squeal of tyres. She hesitated, and then stuck her head out over the balcony to see if there was something going on out the front.

There was.

Several dark-clad people were exiting their cars, all moving quietly in the golden glow of late afternoon.

She saw the glint of light off more than one weapon. They streamed toward the house - some to the front, some circling around the back. She could even see a pair drifting toward Zetsu's door. Shit.

"Shit. Shit, shit _shit_. Oh my god," she hissed. Then, "Ino," she said seriously, moving even as she said it, jogging quietly toward Hidan's room just down the hall. "I'm going to have to call you back. I'll catch up with you some other time, okay?"

"Forehead?" there was a trace of alarm in Ino's voice, but Sakura had already pulled it from her ear.

She didn't bother knocking. "Hidan, there are - people - here," she said, pressing the 'end' button on the call and shoving the phone into her pocket. It buzzed again immediately and she ignored it.

Hidan's scowl at her barging in morphed into a different expression entirely. "People?"

"Armed," she said shortly, and turned on her heel to fetch Deidara. She was barefoot, which wasn't ideal, but at least she was wearing trousers and a good-quality sports bra. She'd been _less_ prepared for violence.

She shoved her head into Deidara's room just as the sound of splintering wood came from downstairs.

He looked up from where he was painting a smiley face onto a little spider sculpture. At the noise, his eyes went wide.

"There were three cars," she said, listening to footsteps as they raced through the lower floors. "I only counted eight people but I left before I got a clear count."

He nodded. "At least eight. Could be as many as fifteen," he said slowly, tilting his head at the noise. "Did you see guns?"

She shook her head. "I can't say there weren't any at all, but I didn't notice them - some people definitely weren't carrying them, at least. Knives, though. Definitely not police."

"Black ops." Deidara looked thoughtfully at the spider he'd been painting, and then around his room. "They won't be breaking in just to hurt us. They won't want witnesses."

A cold ache settled into Sakura's belly. That was right. They had to assume -

"We've gotta assume they're going to try to kill us," said Hidan. His voice was warming up with a fine thread of excitement. He seemed happier than he had any right to be.

" _Kill_ us?" Sakura muttered. She'd believed it with her nerves and her guts, believed it with the cold fire of adrenalin in her veins, but when he said it aloud it sounded - insane. Absurd. _Crazycakes_.

"Mm," Deidara nodded. He looked at Hidan over her shoulder and for once they seemed to see eye to eye, although Deidara looked a bit grim around the edges and Hidan's smile was only growing.

He disappeared back toward his room in silence.

The phone in her pants buzzed again, twice, and then cut off. Sakura glanced at it. Ino. Again. At least she'd gotten the picture and hung up now.

After a second, she pulled it out and fired off a group text that just read: SHAREHOUSE ATTACKEF. She remembered that they didn't know where half the people on that list were, and she had a sudden sick flash that this might have been what happened to Konan and Pein and Jiraiya, too -

"Sakura." Hidan was back. He handed her a crowbar. She'd never seen it before, but the heft and solidity of it was very comforting in her hand. She gripped it tightly. Okay. She was armed. Wouldn't Kakashi-sensei be pleased?

In his other hand, he had a pair of sneakers she'd kicked off earlier. That was - astonishingly practical.

She shoved them on, noticing as she did that there was a cleaver the length of his goddamn forearm shoved through the belt loops of his jeans. Ah. That was the Hidan she knew.

Downstairs, somebody screamed. Whoever the voice belonged to, it sure wasn't Sasori.

Deidara made a delighted noise. " _Danna_ ," he said happily, even as he was grabbing glass jars and bits of - it looked like putty and cotton wool, but she was sure it wasn't. As he moved the things in his room around, strange smells rose from their keeping places. It smelled... acidic, chemical, bleachy.

Sakura rather thought that them hearing the scream meant something had gone wrong with Sasori's plan. He was badly outnumbered and wouldn't let anybody make a sound to draw attention if he could help it. But she wasn't about to be the one to tell Deidara. Instead she took a deep breath and listened to the stop of boots on the stairs.

More than one of them were coming this way.

Sakura took a deep breath and gripped her crowbar. She thought wildly about leaping out the window, but she had already seen the people going around the sides of the houses, seen the entrances of Zetus's place were just as well covered as theirs. There wasn't going to be much hope in running.

"Alrighty then," purred Deidara, getting up and flexing his long, deft fingers.

So they were under attack, and they would fight or they would die.

Sakura's fingers drifted over the cold iron of her crowbar. From a distance, she heard her own voice say: "The stairs are narrow - could we bottleneck them there?"

"If we move now," Hidan agreed.

So they did.


End file.
